


Can't Help You Fix Yourself

by tisfan



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Dubious Ethics, Dubious Science, Everyone Is Poly Because Avengers, Gaslighting, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, M/M, Medical Trauma, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Polyamory, Pregnancy, Psychological Trauma, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2020-10-18 10:07:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 30,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20637401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: Tony Stark has always known that Captain Rogers was his soulmate.What he didn't know...was why.





	1. The Birth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ssyn3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssyn3/gifts).

> This fic is not yet finished, but is planned. Endgame is Stuckony. There will be Angst.
> 
> This fic also plays around with time a bit. I've put dates where they change, so read accordingly.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything will be all right.
> 
> Howard said so

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains traumatic experiences during labor, gaslighting, and what might be considered severe spouse abuse (Howard and Maria). You know your own comfort levels, please read accordingly. I will answer any questions you might have about the chapter at my tumblr account [Tisfan](https://tisfan.tumblr.com/)

_1971_

Maria Stark screamed.

It wasn’t unusual, really. She was giving birth, screaming was part of the process, everyone always said so.

Maria expected it to hurt, but she hadn’t been screaming, not really. Not until the doctor pulled out a shiny needle, the barrel filled with a strange blue liquid, one drop glistening from the end of the cannula. 

“Here you are, Mrs. Stark, that’ll make that nasty old pain go away,” the doctor said. 

She didn’t know him, and there was something generically humiliating about being naked in the same room with a man she’d never even met. Although she’d expected that, a little bit, too. Her girlfriends who’d already had their heirs had said that once she started the labor process, she became a non-entity. No one would look at her twice, but the doctors would come in and out, their only concern not her grotesquely stretched and displayed vagina, but the child that would soon be entering the world.

Maria thought they meant to reassure her that no one would be paying her nakedness any mind, but she felt an odd frisson of unease, instead.

“What is that?” she demanded, staring at the needle.

“Darling,” Howard said, and Maria jerked her head to the other side to stare at her husband, the man she trusted. Who was, in fact, the only other person in the room. She wasn’t sure how that happened; weren’t there supposed to be nurses and assistants and -- hadn’t she said she wanted her mother to be here? She’d called her mother when the first pains started. “Just take it easy, everything’s going to be just fine.”

She’d been worried, but not _scared_, until he said that.

Why wouldn’t everything not be fine?

“Howard?”

She wanted to demand more explanations, any explanation. She’d been too busy listening to the urges of her suddenly tumultuous body to notice how strange all of this was until now.

Howard had driven her. Howard had. Not the driver, not an ambulance. Howard put her in the back seat of the car as soon as she’d gotten off the phone with her mother, and driven her. Not to the clean, white hospital she’d expected, but somewhere else. A… smaller building.

“It’s just the lab, don’t worry, special arrangements,” Howard had said.

But Maria wasn’t sure where she _was_. She wasn’t sure who this man was who was offering her a needle.

And Howard… Howard wasn’t meeting her gaze.

She’d become a non-entity. Not a woman, not a wife. But an incubator for a child.

Maria reached for her husband, determined. She would drag his arm closer and bite him if she had to, but she was going to get some _answers_.

Except she felt the needle prick her other arm while she’d been distracted, and…

Maria screamed.

***

She woke up and there was no one there. Scared. Alone. She couldn’t remember anything around the swelling fear. Not even her name.

She ached all over and her chest hurt like someone was laying on it. Over the aches -- or under it -- there was a sticky, sweaty patina. She gradually noticed that her thighs were wet, her breasts ached, and she had hair in her face.

She went to brush her hair from her face and couldn’t. Her right arm was strapped to a board, an IV in her elbow. The skin around it was dark and bruised and puffy. She followed the line up to an empty bag on an IV stand.

Turning her head, she discovered that her left wrist was held to the bedside with a chain, the shiny handcuff bracelet around her left wrist. What was going on? Where was she?

Her belly was… weird. Numb, somehow, and oddly empty in a way that didn’t remind her of _hunger_. She struggled to sit in the confines of her bonds. Managed to get upright. Her legs were spread and she didn’t seem to have any control over them, numb and useless from the hips down.

What was going on?

She opened her mouth on a sob, her voice harsh and ragged. She’d planned to scream for help, but-- who would help her? There was no one here, there was nothing here, and… someone had brought her here. Someone she _trusted_.

Maybe not to care for her, not exactly, but the--

_Where was her baby?_

She struggled against her bindings, squeezing her left hand as narrow as it would go and, slippery with sweat, she managed to get it free. She picked gingerly at the tape around the IV line, each tug of sticky stuff painful, but not half as painful as the fear in her chest. Where was her baby in this horrible place?

She drew in a deep breath and pulled the needle out. It splattered blood and then leaked. She grabbed a bit of the sheet and put pressure on the wound, trying to stop her elbow from bleeding while she tried to figure out what to do next.

Her legs were gradually waking up, so she wasn’t paralyzed, she’d just been drugged.

She lowered one side of the bed, the bleeding sluggish now. She had no idea how much time had passed, how much time she had. Where anyone was. Were they just going to leave her to die here, having stolen her baby?

_Where was Howard?_

She rolled out of the bed, keeping hold of the side to steady herself. She needed it. She needed more than the bed, but that was all she had. Her legs were still so weak, and she--

Her stomach roiled and there was hot, wetness between her legs. She was still bleeding. They couldn’t have taken the baby that long ago, could they have? How long would she keep bleeding after birth?

There was a shiny, steel tray on the table nearby, full of wicked looking tools and sharp, stabbing implements. A scalpel, she thought, and gripped it, holding the razor edge out. She was going to find her baby, she was--

The door opened, and the doctor came in, followed by a nurse who had another IV bag. “You are so much trouble, Mrs. Stark,” he said. “If your husband was not paying so very well, allowing me such opportunities, well. Women die in childbirth all the time. Tragic…”

“Who are you?” she demanded, brandishing the scalpel.

“No one you will remember,” he said, and the nurse grabbed her, disarmed her with a bare twist of the wrist.

“You’re not a nurse,” Maria said. 

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Stark,” the woman who was not a nurse said. “You won’t remember any of this. It’ll all be a bad dream.” 

“Where is my baby?” Maria demanded as the nurse held her tight, keeping her standing, “please, where is my baby, what do you want, let me go--”

“Your son, Mrs. Stark?” The doctor smiled, creepy, his puffy lips stretching in an unfamiliar expression. “He’s fine. Very tough. Stark men are like iron, I have been informed.”

The woman who wasn’t a nurse spoke to the doctor in a language Maria didn’t know. Maria struggled to understand, to get away, to get some answers, but she was held firm.

Just an incubator. No one cared about her pain or her fear or--

Her legs went out from under her, and she saw an opportunity. Gravity assisted her, and the fact that they weren’t treating her like a person at all; they underestimated her. Stark men might be iron, but Carbonell women didn’t _surrender._ She grabbed the scalpel as she sprawled on the floor, and as the woman who wasn’t a nurse continued to talk in that strange language reached for her, to yank her back up, Maria stabbed her in the shoulder.

But that bit of defiance and rage was the last she had in her. The nurse didn’t even scream, she just retaliated, and Maria felt a puff of pain against her cheek. Familiar, somehow.

Darkness chased her.

***

When Maria Stark woke up again, she was in the hospital. An actual hospital with nurses and doctors and her husband, and…

Her son, her tiny, perfect son who lay on her chest.

Maria looked down at him, and then put the boy to her breast, letting him suck.

“Howard?” she asked. “What happened?”

“Oh, don’t you worry,” Howard said. “You had a difficult birth. They had to sedate you. The doctor said you had a bad reaction to it, that you might have hallucinated for a while. But nothing happened. We came in, Anthony was born--”

“You named him?” Maria cuddled the child closer.

“After your brother, yes,” Howard said. “I thought you would approve.”

“And nothing happened? There was no strange lab, no-- no doctor who wanted me to die?” The details were slipping away, even as she nursed Anthony. Antonio. _Tony_.

“Of course not, dear. Don’t be silly,” Howard said. “Everything’s just fine. Get some rest. The doctor said you could have some pills for the pain, if it was particularly bad.”

“I’m fine,” Maria said, faintly. “Why wouldn’t I be fine?”

“Well, you should take them anyway,” Howard said, and when he handed her the tablets, she didn’t object.

But when she took the cup of water-- there was a bruise on her wrist that looked remarkably like a handcuff had been fastened there, too tight.

She didn’t say anything. She drank the water, took the pills.

Nursed her son.

Everything was going to be fine.

Howard said so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Bleeding after childbirth](https://www.whattoexpect.com/pregnancy/symptoms-and-solutions/postpartum-bleeding.aspx) which honestly, I didn't know about AT ALL until I was more than 6 months into my pregnancy, and I've known some women who aren't told that until they've delivered.


	2. The Mark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Howard thinks about things, after the Valkyrie has crashed.

_1948_

Steven Grant Rogers had been a lot of things, even before he was given the serum. _Feisty _was a word often used to describe him, probably because he was only five foot four inches and weighed all of ninety five pounds soaking wet. Also, as Doctor Erskine once pointed out, feisty was originally Norse slang that meant something along the lines of “a term of reproach among northern nations for an unwarlike fellow who stayed at home in the chimney corner." 

If he’d been five inches taller, he might have been called a good old chap, and at six feet, started moving into the realm of _righteous_. 

Which is what Erskine had in mind for him the whole time.

Howard Stark had met Steve Rogers only briefly, in the hour or so before the Project was about to kick off. Stark was running the Vita-Ray chamber, and its associated hardware, and he didn’t particularly show any interest in the soft side of it. The test subject, as Rogers was referred to, was irrelevant, as far as Stark was concerned.

Results, results were what mattered.

And cutting down the power requirement for the project, because blacking out the whole city was just not efficient. He’d already started on some design specs for a much better generator system, but they had to be pushed aside in favor of this current experiment.

They weren’t going to win the war on efficient and unlimited electric.

Forty minutes or so, Rogers arrived, in his uniform, and accompanied by Agent Peggy Carter, who looked very much like she’d attached a rail-thin shadow to her side for no particularly good reason. Stark came over, shook the man’s hand, and gave him a quick once-over. Glanced over his file, which included a list of ailments, his meager accomplishments, and a list of scars and marks.

No soul mark.

Because of course not; someone like Rogers with his laundry list of ailments and his drastically short life expectancy, would not have made a good mate, leaving his beloved after only a few years.

Practical things, soul marks, if a bit utterly romantic and the sort of rubbish made for the stage. Howard didn’t have one either, and if he thought about that too much, he was sad. In the meanwhile, he used his mark-free skin to seduce as many women -- and sometimes men -- as might be interested in having some mate-free sex. He’d always said he didn’t have a soul mark because he absolutely would be a terrible husband, and whoever decided to marry him had better go into things with their eyes wide open.

And all of that was pertinent because when the Vita-Ray chamber opened up, out popped Steve Rogers, all six-foot, two inches of him, with glistening muscles and perfectly bronze skin, and a soul mark, clear as day, on his hip about two inches above the bone. Right exactly where a lover’s hand might go.

A red star with some silver-sheen around it.

Beautiful.

Almost as beautiful as the man, some perfect specimen. 

But then things got really busy, what with all the shooting and explosions and chasing, and while Howard Stark never quite forgot that Steve had gone into the chamber without a Mark and came out with one, it didn’t really seem to matter for several years.

Steve was attached to Senator Brandt’s fund-raising campaign and disappeared off the scope of Howard’s awareness for a while. Howard Stark viewed himself as a very practical man, and if something wasn’t (a) immediately in front of him, (b) a problem that needed to be solved, or (c) someone he was interested in seducing, he forgot about it. Much to the dismay of a lot of women who moved from point A to point C to point B rather rapidly.

He’d asked Pegs about it, once, well after Steve had been detached from SSR, if she’d noticed the mark, if she had any thoughts about it. They were rather drunk, having just had another abysmal failure in weaponry testing. 

“You don’t have to have a soul mark to like a person,” she’d enunciated, waving the bottle around at him. 

“Don’t waste the good booze,” Howard told her, taking the bottle away before she spilled it. And that had been that. Peggy wasn’t Steve’s soulmate. 

Not that it mattered, just idle speculation.

When Rogers ended up raiding a Nazi work camp, stealing valuable information and rescuing over a hundred American soldiers -- mostly his best friend, Sargeant Barnes, but the rest of them weren’t complaining either, it stopped being speculation. 

The kind of dedication, friendship, loyalty… that was soulmate material right there.

But Barnes didn’t have a mark, either. Howard knew, he’d snuck into the files one night and looked over the man’s medical records. Soulmate marks were always made note of. In fact, if a man had a mate, and not just a mark, that would get him out of military service, since a mate might well be killed by the death of her partner, and that just wasn’t good for morale.

Good thing soul marks were as rare as they were, or there wouldn’t be a military to defend them. Nazis probably didn’t care about marks, sent their people into battle anyway, and the death of some Berlin matron would be considered a noble sacrifice.

Or something.

Howard didn’t know how Nazis might think. He tried not to speculate on that too much.

The problem with soul marks is that they weren’t a very well understood science; even squishier than psychology, utterly reliant on the testimony of people who were utterly besotted with each other. There were only a few things that were, in fact, facts.

First: the marks appeared on the body. No one was ever born with one. The earliest anyone’s mark developed was five or six years old. It wasn’t linked to the birth of their mate, or any other factor that anyone could see. They just… appeared. Like a rash, Howard thought once, spitefully.

Second: A person could usually find their soulmate; once the mark appeared, there was a vague tugging in the direction of their mate. It did tend to mean, barring excessive distance, or a mate that moved around a lot, most people found their mates.

Third: the mark disappeared if the soulmate died; losing color and gradually going grey and smeary until it was nothing more than a faded bruise on the skin.

That was what scientists knew, and because there really wasn’t any notable or scientifically interesting things going on with people in love -- their babies weren’t any more prone to surviving than other couples in the same age range, they didn’t live longer, and they weren’t healthier -- no one really cared. A soul mark was between a person and their mate.

And that was all Howard really cared about.

Right up until Steve Rogers went into the ice. He crashed the Valkyrie to save the world -- taking Schmidt’s bombs and tech, the Red Skull himself, and the tesseract -- and burying all of them in a thick sheet of ice and freezing water.

For a few days, the nation was in mourning, and then Senator Brandt -- who most people had forgotten about -- went on the news looking for the poor mate of Steve Rogers. There were pictures of his soul mark, and rewards.

For the purposes, Howard learned, of maybe tracking down the hero. Of knowing, for sure, if Steve was alive or dead.

No one came forward with a credible claim, although there were lots of fakers.

Tattoos and ink-work didn’t fool anyone.

You couldn’t fake a soul mark.

For Howard, the war went on like usual; Hydra was down, destroyed, or at least, scattered and disorganized. He rather doubted they’d just lay over and die, or surrender. They’d regroup, but that was a problem for future generations. Howard Stark, SSR, and the US military still had a war to win.

It wasn’t until after the war, deep in talks with Armin Zola, the lead Hydra scientist, that Howard really started thinking about Steve’s mark. About soul marks in general. What they knew about them. Nothing, really. Less than nothing.

“I wonder,” Zola said, wearing his prison clothing like a suit of armor, grey and plain, but still strong, still cunning. They were going to have to keep an eye on this guy, Howard thought. He was still dangerous. “I wonder if you have done everything you could to recover Captain Rogers, or Herr Schmidt.”

“Can’t imagine what we’d want Schmidt for,” Howard said. “That guy was crazier than a bag full of weasels.”

“In truth, it was the serum that did it,” Zola said. 

“The serum made Schmidt into a homicidal maniac?”

“No,” Zola said, softly. “He was that, before. But before, he was also cunning. The serum made him impatient, made him dream big, but without the authority or intelligence to achieve those dreams. He had no… handler. You should consider this carefully, if you decide to pursue the serum. Even your Captain America, yes, he was rash, impatient. He needs to be steadied.”

“Well, if we’d ever found Rogers’ mate, we might have had one,” Howard said, not really thinking about it. He thought that was common knowledge, that Rogers had a mate and they hadn’t found her.

“He had a soul mark,” Zola said. “_Interesting_.”

“Hmm,” Howard said. “Yep, right on his hip. Red star, silvery outlines.”

“_Fascinating_,” Zola said. “He did not have this--”

“Before the serum, no,” Howard said. “So, tell me what you know about Erskine’s formula.”

“I had been working on a newer version,” Zola said, “before I was so rudely interrupted by the Captain’s impetuousness, and Schmidt’s lack of foresight. With adequate facilities, provided, of course, by the United States, I might be able to make some progress on replicating the formula.”

Howard snorted. “Yeah, like that’s ever going to happen.”

It probably would, Howard thought, his own personal distaste aside. They couldn’t afford to be picky in their choices of allies. Zola could be used; he wasn’t a powerful man. As long as he could be supervised, adequately watched by top, trusted agents, there was no reason why they couldn’t make use of what he knew.

They’d just have to be very, very careful. And make Zola earn it.

“So, right now, you’ve got nothing to bargain with,” Howard said.

“You have all my notes,” Zola told him. “I am a great scientist, but I cannot replicate such a delicate process from memory alone.”

“Give me something,” Howard said. “A base or lab we haven’t located yet. Something, and I’ll see about getting you copies of your notes.”

Zola nodded, and without much more persuasion after that, gave up a Hydra cell in France. Two days later, SSR agents raided it and brought back schematics for the tesseract weapons. Useless, now that they didn’t have the tesseract.

Howard made arrangements for Zola to get his notes, and then started the first of many trips into the Arctic seas to look for the Valkyrie, the tesseract. Steve. 


	3. In the End, It's Only the Beginning

_ 1943 _

Steve stared out at the vast expanse of the ice.

_ It’s really pretty _ , he couldn’t help but think, the way the sunlight reflected off the ice, a brilliant ball of red and orange, surrounded by blue seas and huge icebergs, jagged and shining like diamonds. He wished that he could draw it. He wished that he could show it to Bucky.

Bucky.

The man who wasn’t his soulmate, despite everything that Steve had thought would happen. Neither of them had actual marks when they were kids, so Steve accepted that. Bucky was his love, and he was Bucky’s and they both knew it even if -- markless -- they weren’t allowed to say so.

But Bucky was gone, and Steve had a soulmark for someone he’d never met.

_ And I don’t want to meet them, _ Steve thought. The rate the ground was coming up to meet the Valkyrie, Steve didn’t really think that was going to be a problem.

He’d be dead in a few minutes, and all of this confusion would be over.

Peggy, who was a passing fancy, was still calling his name in his ear, but Steve wasn’t answering her. Better to make it a clean break, rather than letting her hear him die. He turned off the comms and moved away from the pilot’s chair. There wasn’t any front screen anymore, and he didn’t feel like dying by being crushed to death by incoming snow. That seemed undignified somehow.

But he was going to die. He’d known enough to give Howard a location, there could have been a rescue attempt mounted. Something.

But Steve didn’t want anything.

He was tired of war, he was tired of fighting. The thing he’d been fighting for most -- to bring Bucky home safe -- was a ruin. And then there was revenge, except somehow, he was fairly certain that Red Skull was still alive out there. Somewhere. He’d had some sort of last minute escape, but at least he wasn’t in Europe anymore. He wasn’t on this plane full of bombs. He probably wasn’t even on the planet anymore, and that was a problem for some other person.

Steve couldn’t get to him, and Red Skull probably couldn’t get back, which was as much as Steve could expect if he couldn’t have agonizing death and remorse for everything that Red Skull had done. Steve wasn’t going to have gotten that, either. People like Red Skull didn’t die regretting what they’d done. They died in shock, certain that they, themselves, could never be killed.

Steve had always expected to die.

Rebirth gave him a new grasp on life, but Steve had always expected to die young.

Maybe it was better this way; in a world of common men, someone had played God and made him a Hero. There wasn’t a lot of room in the world for a Hero, if there wasn’t a Villain. And Steve, just by virtue of being around, was going to cause escalation. People would want to prove something, or be jealous. He’d never have a moment’s peace again.

And if he was going to do all that, at least he could have had Bucky at his side.

But that wasn’t going to happen either. 

His hand went to the spot on his hip where that red star had sprung; he’d felt it forming, even over the pain of transformation. He’d grown almost a foot in less than five minutes. Caterpillars didn’t go into their cocoons to grow wings; they went in to melt into goo and that goo became a butterfly.

Steve knew how the caterpillar must feel; the vita-ray chamber had been horrific, like all his bones were melting and his flesh was tearing open.

And even in the middle of that agony, he’d felt the soul mark bloom, like a flower, hot and alive against his skin.

There wasn’t much in the Valkyrie built for comfort, all hard lines and iron benches, but Steve found a nook behind the launch bay. He was going to get bounced around when the plane crashed, but curling up inside the hideaway made him feel secure.

Hand on his hip, he thought a brief farewell to the soulmate he’d never meet. Maybe they’d be better off without him.

The plane bounced a few times as it skidded to a halt across the ice, and then, slowly, started sinking.

Death was going to take longer than Steve expected.

But he was tired.

He closed his eyes and waited for it to be over.

***

_ 2013 _

“Seismic activity and shelf break show there was a substantial crack here,” Janet Van Dyne said, looking up from her notes. She looked even more like a bee than a wasp in her bright yellow artic coat, puffy and fat, with black gloves. 

Tony didn’t say anything about it, though. He liked living.

“Probably over three hundred thousand tons of ice fell off. Those  _ seracs  _ are new. They weren’t here last trip. We had another quarter mile of what we thought was stable shelf.”

“You want me to take a dip, swim around, see if I see anything new?” That was Carol; she was wearing a jacket in some bare acknowledgement of the cold, but Tony knew she didn’t really feel it. She had her re-tooled Kree uniform on underneath, and it was better insulated and more adaptable to extreme climate than anything earth-made. But she tried not to brag about it too much, and she wore her leather jacket.

“Do we know what caused the drop?” Tony couldn’t take his eyes off the ragged shelf, sixty feet of ice that stabbed out of the frozen ocean like an accusatory fist. It was so faint that he might not even have noticed it, if he wasn’t trying to figure out if he was just imagining it. A tug. Interest. But he’d found interesting things in the Arctic before and it had never been what he’d wanted it to be. So, he might be imagining it.

“Global warming?” Jan suggested with a shrug. 

“A little spider dropped a word in my ear,” Carol said, “last time she was in the office. Banner made a trip to the Arctic last year. No one knows why. He stayed about three weeks, and then left again. Maybe Hulk decided to smash it up.”

‘You know, I wouldn’t doubt that,” Tony said. He adjusted his face mask. Frozen beard was uncomfortable, along with the chapped lips that he usually got while expeditioning in the frozen wastelands. 

“We’ve sailed up and down the shelf here for an hour,” Jan pointed out. “You keep staring at it. Do you think he’s in that mess somewhere, and we just couldn’t feel him through the ice last time?”

_ We couldn’t feel him? What we? _ Tony snorted. He was never sure that he could feel Captain America. His soul mate. His other, better half.

His hand went to his side, just under his ribs, where his soul mark was. It had come in very early. He was four, one of the youngest ever, and for the first time in his entire life, Howard Stark had smiled at his son. 

Captain America had a mark, just like that. Which meant he wasn’t dead, he was preserved somewhere in the Arctic, and when Tony was older, they’d come up and locate him.

Of course, that was before they knew the damn mark was a dud. 

Tony’s sense of  _ where  _ was so faint as to be useless. There had been all sorts of speculation about it; that Cap’s state kept his body from exerting the telltale  _ tug _ . There had been other cases with mates who were not able to find each other, who couldn’t feel the tug. It wasn’t that unusual.

But it was useless.

Despite that, Howard dragged Tony to the Arctic from the time he was twelve, until his death in 1991. Search and Rescue was one of SI’s money sinks, Howard’s personal project, a lot more Search and no Rescue, but whatever.

Tony had followed the pattern near-religiously for the first few years after Howard died. And then he’d missed a year because of an important business merger, and-- he went the next two years after that. Skipped a few more years.

Now, now Tony was forty-two years old. The meaning of life, the universe, and everything.

If they didn’t find Captain America this year, Tony was going to quietly close the project, move on with his life. It didn’t matter that he didn’t have a soulmate, he couldn’t miss what he’d never had. Lots of people managed to live happy lives without one.

“Yeah, let’s take a look,” Tony said. “Who knows, maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“Hold my coat,” Carol yelled and threw the jacket at Tony. It hit him in the face, still warm, and smelling faintly of Carol’s perfume.

“Show off,” Tony called.

“Takes one to know one, Stark,” Carol responded. The face bubble formed over her just before she hit the icy water.

“Ug, I hate watching her do that,” Jan said. “Makes me cold just thinking about it.”

“You know, I could put some micro-heaters inside a windbreaker,” Tony suggested. “Keep you warm, and look sleek and fashionable.”

“You design the heaters, I’ll design the coats,” Jan said, with a giddy little grin. “We’ll make millions.”

“Pocket change, and you know it,” Tony said. He was about to say more, especially about the fact that a microheater was going to be a costly enterprise and therefore most people wouldn’t buy the coats, when Carol burst out of the water like some deadly, glowing orca.

She shook out her hair.

“I found the Valkyrie.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \-- A serac (originally from Swiss French sérac) is a block or column of glacial ice, often formed by intersecting crevasses on a glacier. Commonly house-sized or larger, they are dangerous to mountaineers, since they may topple with little warning. Even when stabilized by persistent cold weather, they can be an impediment to glacier travel. (from Wiki)


	4. The Child Soulmate

_1975_

“I hurted myself,” Tony said to Jarvis, hand clapped over his ribs. He couldn’t see very well -- his arm kept getting in the way and squinting down his side made his head feel wobbly. But there was definitely a red mark there, and it _hurt_.

“All right, let me look, Master Anthony,” Jarvis said, dropping down on one knee. Jarvis wasn’t as young as he used to be and his knees popped alarmingly as he squatted, but he didn’t say anything, and Tony knew better than to mention the sound. You didn’t talk about things like that. He’d discovered that the hard way, more than once.

Usually, he didn’t talk about pain, either. He’d learned to stifle his sobs, most of the time. But this was bothering him, not because it hurt so very badly -- he’d hurt himself worse before, and Dad had made him scream once or twice -- but because he couldn’t remember how he’d done it.

He hitched up his shirt and turned to show Jarvis the red mark.

“Oh,” Jarvis said, very softly.

“What’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing,” Jarvis said. “Your soul mark has come in.” He touched the mark with light fingers, cool, and old-man soft. “It’s a star. Just like you.”

“I’m a Stark, not a star,” Tony protested, but he grinned anyway, because Jarvis was silly. And nice to him. And if Tony had a soul mark, that meant someone would love him, love him more than anything ever. That was good, right? “Do you have a mark?”

Tony knew not everyone did. 

“I do,” Jarvis said. “Would you like to see it?”

“Is it Ana’s mark?”

“It’s our mark,” Jarvis said. He rolled up his sleeve -- Tony had never seen any more of Jarvis than his wrists, always wearing his formal black coat -- to show off a silvery mark just under his elbow. It was round at the top, with a long, thick stick. Like a lollipop, or a popsicle. 

“What is it?”

“It’s called a _menat_,” Jarvis said. “It’s a symbol of love and protection.”

“So, you protect Ana and she loves you,” Tony said.

“I think you vastly underrate how very fierce my Ana is,” Jarvis said. “Indeed, I find myself hiding behind her, quite often.” He laughed in that way that adults did when they said something Tony wasn’t supposed to understand.

“And hers is the same?”

“It’s a little different,” Jarvis said. “Hers is inverted from mine, like a reflection in a pond.”

“How did you know that you were mates, then, if it’s not the same?” Tony rubbed at his mark. What if his looked different? What if his mate didn’t think they were right for each other?

“We didn’t,” Jarvis said. “Not for a long, long time. Hers is here, in the small of her back, and I didn’t see it for several months after we met. And I was a soldier, wearing my uniform, so she never saw mine, either. By the time I saw her mark, I already knew that I loved her. She’d only ever seen her mark in the mirror, so when she saw mine, she knew. But she didn’t tell me about it for a while.”

“Sounds complimicated,” Tony said.

“It can be,” Jarvis said. “But it’s worth it. I love Ana more than anything, ever. And someday, you’ll meet the person who feels that way about you.”

That was a nice thought. Tony liked it.

***

_2013_

The ship was dripping frozen slurry as Carol wrenched it from its more than half a century resting place. That had stopped before she even got it to solid land; the air was so cold that a double handful of icicles snapped off when she dropped it.

Tony shuddered at the sound of almost half a million pounds of German crafted steel smashed into the ice. The boom echoed for several long moments, making talk impossible, which was just as well because Tony was known for talking, especially at inappropriate moments, and for a change, he had nothing to say.

Staring at the frozen, dead remains of the Valkyrie, Tony decided that he’d never actually expected to find his soulmate. Despite what Howard had said, and despite Howard’s sometimes giddy optimism, Tony had also had enough of the back of Howard’s hand and his cutting words to come to the conclusion that someone like Captain America was never actually going to _love_ Tony. 

Which meant, in practical terms, they were never going to find him.

Because Tony didn’t think he could stand the idea of looking Captain America -- Steve Rogers, his soulmate -- in the face and seeing nothing there but a shallow mirror of Howard’s contempt and jealousy.

And now, that moment that Tony never quite believed in, was here. He was utterly, and completely, speechless.

Motionless. Staring at the ship as the water froze into beads along the metal. Carol, still steaming slightly, touched down next to the Valkyrie’s bomb bay, which was open, the ramp a raggedly gaping mouth.

“Come on,” Jan said, putting her gloved hand on Tony’s arm. “Can’t let Danvers have all the excitement.”

Tony activated the Iron Man rocket boots -- he wasn’t wearing the whole suit because the heating system put a severe drain on the energy requirements, but the boots were mostly enough -- and hopped more than flew over to the Valkyrie. If they were going to do some long-term work that required the suit, Tony would suit up, but as it was, he preferred the coat. There was something about standing around in a tin can that made him feel like he ought to be cold, even when he wasn’t.

Jan flitted in front of him, her tiny wings sticking out of the back of her puffy coat. She was about the size of a tennis ball, and looked like one. It was getting harder not to point that out.

Walking into the Valkyrie was like stepping into an ancient tomb. There was the sense that nothing had breathed here for decades. The _stillquiet _of death, pressure and solemnity, kept them talking in low whispers, made each clang against machinery and scrap metal a blasphemy.

“There’s a bay full of explosive munitions here, Tony,” Carol reported, jerking her thumb back toward the racks.

“Can you tell if they’re still in the mood to boom? Because that would end our expedition real quick,” Tony asked.

“I’ll look ‘em over. If I read my history correctly, these are Tesseract bombs. If they go off at all, everyone on the planet would be in trouble. I know global warming wasn’t a thing in Cap’s time, but still, dropping this kind of payload and hoping it wouldn’t explode? Not a great plan.”

“I’ll be sure to file a report,” Tony said. “Take care of it. If that’s not too much trouble?”

“Hey, I punched a meteor back into space,” Carol said. “I can handle a few Terran bombs.”

“Which is why we’re all trusting you with our lives,” Jan said. 

Carol threw up her hands and stalked into the bay, muttering and grumbling. It wasn’t that Tony couldn’t have inspected the bombs himself, but-- well, he had other things on his mind.

They made their way, slowly, from the back of the airship to the pilot’s deck. There were holes and old burn scars, and Tony couldn’t tell if they were war wounds from the fight inside the Valk while Cap was still alive and active, or if they were remnants of the ship’s time in the ice.

Didn’t matter. 

Well, that scar was decidedly from the shield, Tony decided. And that hole that shot straight from the deck to the bottom of the ship was probably how the Tesseract had gotten out in the first place. Howard had found it years before -- and then cooperated with Carol’s former Commanding Officer during the Pegasus project, and… as far as Tony knew, the Tesseract was somewhere in SHIELD’s hands now.

Best place for it. Like the Arc of the Covenant, Tony imagined it sealed in a crate, forgotten. Lost in the archives. 

“Here,” Tony said, and his voice came out as a mere breath of nothingness. He coughed, tried again. “Jan, he’s here.”

Frozen like a diamond in the rough, bits of the Captain could be seen through the ice. Pale hair, pale features, the torn uniform, a glint of buckle. 

He was laying as if he’d been sleeping, frozen to the deck. Like he’d just gone to sleep. 

Well, that was less freaky than the way a teenage Tony had sometimes imagined it; Cap frozen as he struggled against drowning. This made it look like he just… lay down.

Okay, so maybe that was even freakier. 

There weren’t a lot of reasons why Cap couldn’t have gotten out of the ice; the whole front portal was smashed open, the hanger bay door was ajar. 

“Why didn’t you just swim out,” Tony murmured. “Did you mean to die here?”

“Hey, Tony--” There was a raw scrape of metal on metal, a shimmer in the air like an optical illusion.

He turned, and Jan was holding up a brilliant red, white, and blue disk.

The shield.

***

_1980_

“Do you think Captain America is going to like me?” Tony wondered out loud. He probably should have known better, because asking Howard much of anything was usually a mistake, and something as romantic and drivel-minded as base sentiment was just asking to be reprimanded.

“That’s irrelevant,” Howard snapped. He was looking over maps of the Arctic, trying to get Tony’s stupid, useless soulmark to give him any sort of direction at all, but maps weren’t actually being there, and Tony didn’t have a single sense of his soulmate at all.

Mostly.

Every once in a while, Tony would have _dreams_.

Dreams of a red, white and blue disk, shaped from metal, that knew his hand, that worked with him as a partner. Captain America’s shield, beautiful and mysterious. Made from rare metals and shaped by Howard Stark’s genius.

Dreams of white and cold, dreams of dripping water and the endless creak and rattle of the ship around him. Dreams that he couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. That he’d meant to die and hadn’t managed it. And an inescapable grief, yearning for something that was gone and that he’d never have back.

_I’ll give it to you_, Tony would think, trying to reach his soulmate, who was so, so sad. But he never could.

He didn’t tell Howard about them, because they didn’t really make sense, and he didn’t want to listen to yet another lecture about how useless he was. Couldn’t sense Captain America, was only three grades ahead in his schoolwork, and constantly getting in trouble at school anyway.

Howard was about ready to ship him off to a boarding school -- they’d gotten uniforms for him yesterday. Or, more exactly, Ana had taken him in to the tailor a week ago to be fitted for the uniforms and they’d been _delivered_ yesterday. Everything had to be taken in or taken up, since Tony was smaller by three whole sizes from the rest of the students.

And, having done this before in public school, Tony had reason to believe that nothing much was going to change for a boarding school. Meeting new students was going to end up with no friends and probably a black eye and a sternly written note home.

Which would mean coming home for break to Howard and the back of Howard’s hand, as well, depending on how soon the note arrived.

“So, nothing?”

Tony stared at the map again. How was he supposed to feel where on the map Captain America was? It’s not like the map was anything except an inaccurate visual representation of how they thought the land looked.

What he really needed was camera pictures, taken from above. There were some satellite pictures from the Landsat program, but they were far enough away that they weren’t really usable as maps.

Tony wondered if he could get one of his airplane remote kits to carry a camera. Of course, for the Arctic, they’d have to be cold-weather capable and snow and waterproof, but--

“Boy!” Howard lifted a hand, but didn’t quite strike Tony. A warning. But he was still given a chance.

Tony laid out what little information they had from the Red Skull’s flight path, how long Captain America was in the air after liftoff, and when they’d lost contact with him. Trajectory wasn’t much different from what Howard had already searched. On the map, it was a small area. On the ground, totally different story.

He couldn’t feel any tug, or anything right, about it. His soulmate remained shrouded from him.

“No, sir,” Tony said, because he calculated the risk of pointing out his assumed trajectory path -- his suppositions based on nothing -- if he made a suggestion based on logic and it was wrong, Howard would probably hit him more than once, even if he’d put off punishment for several months. “I can’t feel anything.”

“Go on, then, useless idiot, get out of here,” Howard muttered, and gave Tony a shove. He hit the desk, feeling the edge bite into his shoulder, but he was on his feet and fleeing before anything worse happened.

One bruise on his shoulder, and he was going off to school. Howard would be off to the Arctic, and if Tony was very lucky, he wouldn’t see Howard again for _months_.

And maybe, if he didn’t have to spend all his time avoiding his father, he could dream, and figure out what those dreams _meant_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Landsat Program](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landsat_program)
> 
> [Menat](https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pinterest.com%2Fpin%2F552535448028421974%2F&psig=AOvVaw0TFEv-IbkqCNXbDa5BHLqb&ust=1573310155314000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCMjH4qLr2uUCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD%22)


	5. Out of the Ice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is a little on the owie side

_2013_

Steve listened.

Something was happening and Steve was locked in some sort of stasis. He couldn’t move, although he was aware of his breathing, the way his heart beat slow and sluggish, like it was trying to push maple syrup through his veins. He couldn’t see anything except the reddish wash that meant a light on the other side of his eyelids.

He could hear people talking, but he couldn’t make out the words. The gentle squish sound of air through a blood pressure cuff, with an accompanying squeeze around his bicep. Someone touched his chest with gentle fingers, pushed a disk against his skin that felt oddly too warm.

Hospital, then.

Was he sick? He’d spent so much time being sick, he couldn’t always remember, especially when he was just coming out of a fever-- and he felt so hot. Much, much too warm.

He tried to push the blankets off him, but he couldn’t move.

Was he really that weak?

Steve couldn’t remember the last time he was sick-- which seemed odd for some reason that he couldn’t put his finger on.

There was a squelch of static and then the radio came on, smooth big band music, the kind of thing he might have listened to as a boy, sitting on the fire escape under Mrs. Kesbrak’s window. They didn’t have a radio in the Rogers’ household, so it wasn’t like he got to pick his own music. He would sit on the fire escape, the metal bars cold under his ass. His mom would sometimes tell him to be careful not to cut himself. He didn’t need lockjaw on top of his other problems.

Was he inside, in bed, and Ma had left the window open? That didn’t seem likely. If he was sick, she would have closed everything up to keep him warm, and he was _so warm_.

He could hear water dripping somewhere far away, and his throat burned.

“Wat--”

“Here you are, Cap,” someone said, a man said, the voice not quite unfamiliar. Like he’d heard it in his dreams. That same someone put a straw to his lips. “Don’t choke on it this time, okay? You wouldn’t let me give you ice chips, which is what all the doctors recommend. Stupid doctors, I know, but you’re classified, and so they don’t understand.”

Steve sucked water through the straw, and it felt strange against his lips, not paper like he was used to, but something slick and smooth. 

“Yeah, I know how it goes, Cap,” the voice said. “When I came back from Afghanistan, I couldn’t get in the _shower_. They waterboarded me, while I was holding a damn car battery, so when I wasn’t drowning, I was being electrocuted. So, yeah. For a long time, it was bird baths in the sink and using dry shampoo on my hair. So, I get it. You don’t want anything that feels like that again. No ice. Yeah.”

_Ice, what the hell was he talking about? And who was Cap? _

He felt like he might have gone through this a few times already, the man talking to him, grounding him, but he couldn’t remember anything before just a few minutes ago.

The radio switched over from music to a baseball game. Or maybe Steve had gone back to sleep, because he didn’t seem to be drinking anymore.

He was hungry, just a little. And listening to the baseball game.

Steve seemed a little more alert, now. He remembered his previous thoughts; who was Cap. _Why, that’s me. _Captain Steve Rogers. Captain America.

He’d… he’d gone down in the plane, and--

“Curve ball, high and outside for ball one. So the Dodgers are tied, 4-4. And the crowd well knows that with one swing of his bat, this fellow’s capable of making it a brand-new game again. Just an absolutely gorgeous day here at Ebbets Field. The Phillies have managed to tie up at 4-4. But the Dodgers have three men on. Pearson beaned Reiser in Philadelphia last month. Wouldn’t the youngster like a hit here to return the favour? Pete leans in. Here’s the pitch. Swung on. A line to the right. And it gets past Rizzo. Three runs will score. Reiser heads to third. Durocher’s going to wave him in. Here comes the relay, but they won’t get him.”

Steve opened his eyes.

He stared around; everything was cream and white. Very clean. Cleaner than anything he’d ever seen before.

He sat up. There was a radio in the corner. He was in a cot with a wad of blankets in his lap, wearing an undershirt and thin boxers. His boots were on the floor, a shirt hanging up on the hook next to his bed. Civilian garb. 

“Hey, Cap,” someone said, pushing the door open, and it was the same voice who’d been speaking to him while he drank water through a strange straw. “You’re awake, that’s good.”

“Where am I?”

“Recovery room in New York City,” the man said, and he was a pretty man, familiar somehow, with dark hair and merry brown eyes and a neat little beard cut close and shaped. He wore clothing that didn’t look at all familiar. A sportcoat, that much Steve recognized, and some sort of shirt underneath it that had a picture drawn on it somehow, and jeans, but so tight, practically straining to cover his thighs. There were a pair of pink cheaters hanging off the shirt collar.

“Where am I, really?” Steve scowled.

“_Recovering_,” the man said again, slowly, like Steve might not speak English, which just got his back up even further. 

“This game--” Steve said, staring at the radio. “I was at that game, Dodgers 8 to 4. I was there. 1941. So I’m going to ask you again.” He got out of the bed and stalked across the room, until he was right up in the man’s face. He didn’t appear to be armed, and Steve could probably break him across his knee without even trying. “Where am I?”

“That’s not the right question, sleeping beauty,” the man said. 

“What’s the right question,” Steve demanded, more than asked.

“The question you should be asking is not where the hell are you, but _when… _the hell are you.”

“When the hell am I?” Steve repeated, not because he was actually wondering, but because that question made no sense whatsoever.

“So glad you asked, sunshine,” the man said. “You have been asleep for a long time. Seventy years. It’s twenty-thirteen. I know, I’m supposed to break it to you gently, but you seem more of a rip the bandaid off type of guy to me, and I would hate for someone to fuck around with me, at a time like this.”

The guy could have been spouting nonsense, for all that his words made sense to Steve.

“You’re kidding. Where am I, who are you-- what the hell is going on?”

“While I do, frequently, kid, I’m not joking,” the man said. “You’re in a room in my mansion in New York City, so I see you looking all punchy, here, and I’m going to ask you to please not, because my assistant wanted to put you in a hospital somewhere and I thought you’d be more comfortable here. So, don’t make me regret that decision. I… well, that’s part of the long story, Cap. My name is Tony Stark. I understand you knew my father.”

Father. Howard Stark had a son? Howard was barely twenty-five, the boy genius who’d been in charge of the engineering part of Project Rebirth, who’d been at the SIS, who’d… flown a plane so that Cap could jump out of it to rescue Bucky.

Bucky, who’d fallen from the train--

And Steve had--

Red Skull--

The Valkyrie--

The ice--

“Hey, hey, Cap- Steve. Come on, Steve, take a breath, I know, I know, it’s a lot. Take a breath with me. In---- out.”

“I-- I had a date,” Steve said, the very first thing that occurred to him.

“Yeah,” Tony said. “Aunt Peggy. She’s told me about it, a few times.”

Steve wobbled, and Tony was guiding him back to the bed, where he fell heavily onto it. “I’m fine,” Steve said, by rote. Because he was always fine, wasn’t he? Now that he had the serum, he was fine.

Even when nothing was fine. Nothing at all was _fine._

“I know,” Tony said. “But you still might want to just sit a moment.”

There was something about that man, the way he hovered, the way he was right there in Steve’s space and Steve was not minding. “Who are you?”

“Tony Stark--”

“No,” Steve said, even though he wasn’t denying it. Now that he looked again, Tony looked a lot like Howard. Just enough different, but still. The family resemblance was there. “Who-- who are you?” _Who are you, to me?_

“Uh, hang on, really, I don’t think you--”

“Rip the bandaid off, remember?”

“Oh, yeah, right, okay,” Tony said. He stepped back a bit, then pulled his shirt out from his pants. There was a faint-- something on his skin, like a reflection of light, and then he was turning to show off.

_A soul mark._

Just like Steve’s.

_“Oh.”_

***

Tony didn’t know what he expected. He hadn’t expected anything, he kept telling himself. Captain America was his soulmate, but that didn’t mean anything.

Not really. Especially when, even now, Cap out of the ice, alive, functioning, talking, staring at Tony with blue eyes the color of the summer sky, Tony still couldn’t _feel_ anything. He’d expected to feel something; if nothing else, it might have been a relief to at least have it over with, but he was staring at Cap and Cap was staring back at him.

And there was _nothing. _

He might as well have been staring at a model, or one of the dates that Pepper sometimes set him up for various events. Someone good looking, there was no denying that Captain America was good looking. Only an idiot wouldn’t have noticed how his hair was like antique gold, his eyes were blue and piercing, he had cheekbones sharp enough to cut paper. Strong jaw, stubborn, lush mouth.

He was gorgeous. Piece by piece and as a whole, good looking. Great looking, really. 

But Tony had been surrounded by good-looking people his whole life, and had gone to bed with rather a lot of them.

Captain America didn’t move him. Beyond the general ‘yeah, okay, I’d do him’ feeling that Tony got when he looked at most everyone.

There wasn’t anything more there. There wasn’t anything _special_.

No love at first sight, no swooning, no rapidly beating heart. 

No, no wait, there was something. A little something.

“You’re supposed to be my soulmate?” Captain America said, disbelief coloring his tone.

Yeah, there it was.

_Disappointment._

“It’s what I’ve been told my whole life,” Tony said. “My mark came in when I was four.”

Captain America didn’t quite sneer at him. “Well, you’re a bit young for me don’t you think”

“I’m forty-two, old man,” Tony said. “World War Two ended seventy years ago, largely thanks to you, and you’re back among the land of the living, largely thanks to me. But hey, it’s done, you’re home. You obviously have a lot to catch up on. Make yourself at home, JARVIS will make sure you have everything you need.”

It wasn’t the grand, stomping exit that Tony would have liked to make. He was too disappointed -- both in himself and in the Captain -- to put much effort into it. “It’s hard to believe you’re the guy my dad kept going on about while I was growing up. Seriously, he talked about nothing else. Maybe you should have been _Howard’s_ soulmate.”

Tony just made the door when Cap said, very softly, “I rather thought I was supposed to be Bucky’s soulmate.”

“Yeah, well, he was markless, so you’re stuck with me.”

***

_1982_

Maria Carbonell Stark wasn’t sulking at the breakfast table, even if that’s how Howard would have described it. She was, in her own words, feeling _melancholy_. Her womb, which had quickened again after Antonio was born, had given up on the daughter she’d hoped to bear. Someone who would bring joy into what was a lifeless and still household.

Although, sometimes, in her more lucid periods, Maria thought that perhaps it was just as well. Howard had not proven to be a particularly good husband. Once she’d given him news of the miscarriage, he’d said, “ah, Mare, we’ve got the one, don’t need another,” and grabbed his coat and hat and headed off to his latest mistress.

Maria, of course, not being able to do her wifely duties, so soon after.

She shouldn’t have been sad about that, certainly not _sulking_.

Howard had made things clear, the very first time she’d caught him with a woman on the side. She could stay, or she could go, but Antonio would remain with his father. And she’d never see a dime, and was that what she wanted?

He’d never quite raised a hand to her, but he had been overly stern with Antonio, especially when he was already cross with Maria.

What could she do to protect her son, to protect herself, but stay, and be as meek as possible? Not raise Howard’s temper in a flare toward either of them. She kept trying to teach Antonio -- be still, be quiet, be respectful. Appreciate what your father gives to us, what he provides. Don’t argue with him.

But even as a boy, Antonio was stubborn, and proud, and incapable of letting something go. Especially if he was right and someone else was wrong.

She couldn’t protect him.

Howard had left behind the pills again, the ones the doctor had given her, so many years ago. While she was pregnant, of course, she couldn’t take them, and she wondered if they were what had caused her to lose the baby -- that she hadn’t known, early enough.

“Mom,” Antonio said, and he was looking at her across the breakfast table, where she’d barely poked her egg, and hadn’t touched her coffee at all. “Are you all right?”

Maria tried to find a smile. “I’m only ill, Antonio. It will pass.” She took the pill, swallowed it with her coffee -- _damn cream and sugar in a cup, what the hell did you ask for coffee for? _and took a bite of her egg.

Everything was fine.

Howard would have said so.

“Your father and I are arguing,” she said, and she didn’t know why she said that.

“Mom,” Antonio said. “Do you and -- Dad -- do you have soul marks? Is--”

“No, darling,” Maria said, wondering that he’d never asked before, since his soul mark was often the only reason that Howard paid attention to the boy at all. It wasn’t entirely a lie. Howard certainly didn’t have one. And no one knew, except Maria’s own mother, that Maria had one. She had hers behind her ear, hidden in the wealth of her hair. They wouldn’t have known it at all, except that Maria had once shaved her head in a fit of defiance against all the boys and society that her mother kept forcing on her, trying desperately to make an alliance that would raise them out of poverty. 

Maria’s looks were their ticket out.

Maria had found herself locked away until her hair grew out, and the rumors that she’d had a baby and sent it away made the rounds.

And until Howard came along, Maria’s mother was certain there was not going to be an alliance, or wealth, or anything.

But sometimes, Maria would touch the little eternity sign behind her ear, and wonder where her mate was.

He was not, however, Howard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **paper straws have been around since like the late 1800s. Plastic straws did not become popular until after world war 2
> 
> ** cheaters are sunglasses


	6. Personal Responsibility

_2013_

Steve had to admit, Stark was as good as his word. Steve said he wanted to be left alone, and Stark left him alone. Dumped a bunch of files on him -- paper, he said, shuddering. Ug. -- and set him up in a single apartment in Brooklyn, which was a lot nicer and upscale now than it had been in Steve’s day, and when Steve found out the street rate of his apartment, he almost went to Stark to bitch about it.

On the other hand, everything was more expensive, and one of those files had included a rundown on Stark Industries and everything that Stark owned or had a hand in. His soulmate, Steve thought with a sneer, would barely notice the missing money.

And Steve needed this time, to think, to explore, to try to find some place for himself in this shiny new future.

He found himself drawn to Stark Tower, to stare up at the building from across the street, or sometimes he would find himself in an outdoor cafe, sketching the shape of the building in the sky. He would ride the bus around and around, always looking out the window for the letters that sketched out his soulmate’s name against the sky.

_Stark._

He was everywhere. Stark phones and Stark laptops. On the covers of magazines. Paparazzi followed him around. Charity balls and public interviews. He was on the television, when Steve could bear to watch it at all. He was in the paper.

Steve found himself outside the public library, staring at a monument to the so-called Iron Man, the hero that was his soulmate.

And he felt uneasy. 

He studied the marble work, all smooth lines and gentle swirling white with grey. Hard and harsh, Iron Man seemed like one of those robots from the dime store novels that Bucky loved so much.

Bucky would have loved this; this shiny, noisy future.

Decided, Steve went into the library, offered the newly minted driver’s license with his address on it. “I’d like a library card, please.”

At least the woman behind the counter didn’t seem to recognize him, and as she filled out forms, fingers moving over her keyboard, she explained all the things the library had to offer, including a weekly Anime night (whatever that was, Steve wondered) and classes for computers (Steve signed up) and hands on projects -- crafting, sculpting, potting plants. 

“Is there anything else I can do for you?”

Steve licked his lips. “If I wanted to know about Iron Man, where would be a good place to start?”

“Oh, I see you saw our statue,” she said with a little laugh. “ Mr. Stark donated generously to our public library facility here, so we had the statue put up in his honor. This way.”

They had a little corner display, like a museum, for Iron Man. Magazines and biographies, a film clip played on endless repeat, showing some of the moments of glory. A live-sized photo portrait of Tony Stark hung on the wall.

“I’ll just leave you to it, then, shall I?”

Steve couldn’t have said, later, where the time went. He grabbed a handful of the magazines, two of the biographies, read through them, watched the tape over and over. Stark seemed to love the camera, grinning widely, flipping his faceplate up, even when it would have been hazardous, as if knowing that someone was pointing a camera at him.

He was a showboater, loud, proud, and full of himself. 

What he did was impressive, but it seemed, the longer Steve watched and read, the more it seemed like Stark put on the Iron Man suit to _show off_. Not because he wanted to do good, or because he was worried about people, or even because he felt an obligation to do it, but because he enjoyed playing the hero.

Does it matter why? A voice whispered to him. The people he’s saved are still alive, whether he signed a few pictures or not.

That voice sounded a lot like Bucky.

Bucky, who would have liked this man, who would have wanted Stark to show him everything, to look at Stark’s robots and his flying cars and his iron suits. Who would have sat down and polished off a bottle of fine whiskey and wanted to listen to new music and learn the new dances.

Bucky would have been at home here.

“Excuse me, sir,” the librarian said. “The library is closing in ten minutes, if you need to check anything--”

“I’ll just put these back,” Steve started to say, but trailed off. His neighbor -- he’d seen her a few times before, blond and petite and competent -- was checking out a few books at the desk. Steve let the librarian take his periodicals to reshelve them. Steve was, instead, wondering about the neighbor.

There was no reason for her to be here -- except, maybe, she wanted a book, you paranoid idiot, Bucky’s voice said in his head -- but she hadn’t seemed to have noticed him at all.

“Hello neighbor,” Steve said, as he walked by.

She blinked at him, then smiled. “Oh, right, 32G. Fancy seeing you here.” She was pretty in a way that was familiar to him, soft smile, her hair framing her face, her cheeks round and eyes bright.

“You, uh… want to share a cab? We’re going to the same place?”

“I don’t even know your name,” she said, finishing her check out. She was wearing baggy scrubs in a particular shade of dark red that reminded him of the tatty old rug in his mother’s old bedroom. Her name was Sharon; printed right there on the tag over her pocket.

“It’s Steve,” he said. “Steve Rogers, ma’am.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Steve,” she said.

_You have a soul mate_, Bucky’s voice reminded him.

So what?

“Maybe a cup of coffee?” Steve continued.

“Oh, well, no, no thank you, I’m actually headed off to my shift,” she said. “I work nights, I’m an ER nurse--”

“Oh, all right,” Steve said, and Sharon smiled again.

“Maybe some other time? I’d like that,” she said.

“Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” Sharon said. “If you’re up for a breakfast date, I get off shift at five.”

“It’s a date.”

Steve couldn’t help but grin. A date. He had a date.

***

_A few months later_

Tony looked up from the reports; he had a lot of reports these days, sent to his secure workstation. Nothing on paper, because paper couldn’t be protected nearly as well.

“Bring him in,” he said.

“Are you sure?” Carol asked, because Carol. “You know I can probably handle this whole Loki situation.”

“With one hand tied behind your back, I’ve no doubt. On the other hand, this is the very thing that gave you your powers, and we’re not entirely sure how that’s going to work. The last thing we need is this Loki to make himself your equal, or worse, and then not have any backup at all. Besides, Cap’s been sitting on the sidelines too long. Time to see if he’s going to get back in the fight, or if we can just write him off.”

“I think we should just write him off,” Carol snarked. 

“Well, I don’t know that I can agree to that,” Tony said, mildly. “If nothing else, he’s good for moral. In the meanwhile, see what Fury’s doing to recover some of our other assets, and I’ll go check out the situation in Berlin. You and Cap come after me as soon as possible, and keep Janet on standby, but I want her and Hank keeping watch over that Ghost situation. I’m tired of cleaning up SHIELD’s messes, but what else can we do?”

“Nuke the site from orbit,” Carol said.

“Easy there, Ripley,” Tony said, grinning. “Go bring him in, you’re the best one equipped to handle him.”

“I think you’re vastly overestimating my diplomatic skills, Tony,” Carol said.

Tony raised an eyebrow at her. “Do you think so? You’re the very soul of discretion. Try not to break the city, and I’ll see you in Berlin.”

Tony waited until she left and then pulled up the files on the Tesseract. That thing had a wide and colorful history, and it seemed to have touched every single part of Tony’s life.

Some of it was lost in mythology; the original caretakers (on Earth at least, and by this point, Tony was well aware that there were aliens) said the Tesseract came to them from the Gods. According to his files on this most recent escapade, the same damn Gods (or aliens, Tony was going to go with aliens, aliens fit better into his world view, and really, it didn’t matter what he called them) were back on earth, trying to retrieve it. One of Fury’s SHIELD teams had dealt with this Loki and Thor about a year ago.

Dealt badly, mind you, and no one really knew where either of them had gone off to, but now they were back, and the very first thing Loki had done was broken into a secure SHIELD research vault and stolen the damn Tesseract.

Tony was personally for them taking it and going back wherever they came from; it was theirs originally, let them deal with it. He was all for returning stolen property -- violently if necessary, so he could understand this Loki being a bit tetchy that humans had his Tesseract.

But since he didn’t seem to be returning home with it, and instead, was gathering forces, including some of SHIELD’s own, Fury had finally, finally decided to put the Avengers Initiative into direct action.

Carol had been more than a little smug about the name.

Tony still wasn’t sure if he was all that interested in Fury’s little boy band, but Jan had convinced him that a partnership might work out, and Carol had been more than a little useful.

But some of the other team members, Natasha Romanoff in particular, were not people he_ trusted_.

But he wasn’t involved with that area, and he was already prepping to welcome Dr. Banner aboard as soon as that was feasible. That was an asset that Tony wanted on his side, more brains than brawn and that was saying a lot.

“We’ve got the target confirmed, Stark,” Maria’s voice came in over his com unit.

“All right, JARVIS, you heard the lady,” Tony said, pushing away from his desk. “Heat her up and let’s get ready to rock.”

“And roll, sir,” JARVIS said, his voice dry and crisp and if he’d had eyeballs, he would have been rolling them.

He was in a suit and in the air in less than twenty minutes.

“I’ve got Cap, Tony, we’re taking the Quinjet,” Carol said, in her best Captain Marvel voice.

“How’d you talk him into that, that was quick,” Tony wondered.

“I suggested that since he didn’t do a very good job of getting rid of the Tesseract, this was his mess to clean up. He’s got a strong sense of personal responsibility. He’s not very friendly, though.”

“What do you expect, Carol? All his friends have been dead for fifty years,” Tony said.

“I was in outer space, thinking I was someone else, for half a dozen years,” Carol said. “This shit happens, he needs to get over it.”

“As always, you are a little bonbon of psychotic behavior wrapped up in a pastry of get the fuck over yourself,” Tony said.

“Get busy living, or get busy dying,” Carol said. 

“I hear that. Bring the jet up alongside, I’ll come aboard and pretend that we’re a team.”

“Don’t strain anything,” Carol chiding him. “I know you’re not a team player.”

“Depends on the team, oh Captain, my Captain,” Tony said. “You’re fantastic.”

“No, that’s Reed,” Carol joked. “I’m Marvelous. You still planning on coming to Jim’s birthday thing?”

“Assuming we have a world left in a week, I wouldn’t miss it.”


	7. Of Gods and Men

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooo... this might be the story that never ends, honestly, but I think I'm at the very last bit once I get over this hurdle, so, 13 SHOULD BE the final chapter count...

_2013 _

On the list of things that Steve hated, bullies were top, but second, and not a very distant second, was not knowing what the hell was going on.

He’d been kept out of the loop so many times with the SSR, sent in on missions that the top priority wasn’t _people_, soldiers or civilians, but strategic combat points. Files. Big Picture stuff, that’s what Phillips always said, and sometimes Peggy would explain it, show him how the pieces fit together.

But mostly what Steve saw was people on the ground, suffering.

It wasn’t worth the risk to rescue the 107th. So Steve took matters into his own hands.

Some crazy want-to-be God was killing people in Germany, and no one was interested in the dead, the dying, or the soon to be targeted. They were worried about what this Loki fellow was _doing._

Steve didn’t care what Loki was doing or what his bigger plan was. If they stopped him, here, now. It wouldn’t matter. He’d be dead and he couldn’t hurt anyone anymore.

“Drop me here,” Steve said, looking down at the crowd of people, with this so-called God standing in the middle of them. He was about to execute someone else.

It didn’t take long to cover ground to face off with the man in the green robes. To block the incoming energy blast and knock him down. The crowd scattered, which was probably smart.

“You know, the last time I was in Germany and saw a man standing above everybody else, we ended up disagreeing,” Steve announced himself.

Loki managed to look disdainful, even in the face of weapons from the Quinjet and a super soldier. “The man out of time,” Loki said, and Steve felt a shock course through him. How did Loki know that? He was no God, no matter what people said.

“You’re the one out of time,” Steve said. 

There was a brief struggle. Steve had, only once before, fought someone, an individual who was as strong as he was. The Red Skull. But Loki was strong, he was quick, and he was sneaky. The magician flittered from one spot to the other, always sneaking up on Steve’s blind side, always knocking him off his feet. Witty repartee, and mocking laughter.

“Kneel, and I’ll spare you,” Loki said, staff nearing the tip of Steve’s chin.

“Don’t let him touch you with that, Cap!” Carol yelled in his ear. “I’m coming!”

“Well, don’t rush on my account,” Steve said, and then knocked Loki’s legs out from under him.

Suddenly the sky was full of supers. Iron Man, all red and gold flash, dropped out of the sky to his own entrance theme, something full of drums and screaming vocals that Steve refused to call _music_.

“Miss me, my Captain?” Stark asked, cheerfully. Every bit of weaponry on the suit was pointed at Loki. “Make your move, Reindeer Games.”

“I always miss you,” Carol said, exploding into the sky with her shiny aura. The staff in Loki’s hand shimmered, as if it recognized her. “Cap, you remember Stark, right?”

“Do we need to do this right now?” Steve demanded. “Drop the wand, Loki.”

“Certainly,” Loki said. “Whatever you say.”

“Good move,” Stark commented. 

It was disturbing, really, how calm Loki was. Steve had expected it to end in a fight, something bloody and brutal where a lot of people got hurt, but Loki was calm, quiet, as they got him on the Quinjet in shackles.

“I don’t like this,” Steve said, although he wasn’t sure who he was saying it to. “I don’t remember it being this easy. That guy packs a wallop.”

“Too simple, right, I know,” Stark said, coming up behind him, clanking like a medieval knight. 

“What are we not liking, gentlemen?” Carol swooped in, landing like some sort of flaming ballet dancer.

“This-- it stinks.”

“Excuse you, I bathed,” Loki protested. “Which is more than you might say. Your leather seems a bit… sweaty.”

Steve scowled and sat on the bench next to the prisoner, making an effort when he hooked his hands behind his head to waft as much fresh-from-the-fight in Loki’s direction. This had the side effect of making Carol step away and Stark raise an eyebrow. “I like your style,” he told Steve with a smirk.

“And you’re all about style.”

“So judgemental, Captain Spangles,” Stark tsked. “Don’t act like you know me.”

“I know all about you, I’ve seen the footage,” Steve retorted, aware that Carol was watching them like some sort of high stakes tennis match. And her eyes narrowed dangerously. 

“Tony, can you take us out? And let Fury know we have the douchebag, but the magical Rubix cube is still missing.”

“We’ve got Banner on it, or that’s the plan,” Stark said. “He’s an expert in these sorts of radiation traces.”

“Shoo,” Carol flipped a hand at Stark. “I want to talk to the prisoner and I can’t do that when I’m trying to one-up your sarcastic remarks.”

“That’s because you lose,” Stark said, but he did as she asked, which was a miracle of sorts. Stark seemed… not particularly prone to following orders.

“How do you get him to do that?” Steve wondered.

“First of all, I don’t act like I have a giant chip on my shoulder,” Carol said. “Let me get you a ladder so you can get over it.”

“He’s not a team player,” Steve protested. “He fights for himself. He doesn’t know how to follow orders--”

“And you don’t know how to give them, so why don’t you realize you don’t have the biggest dick around here and sit the fuck down.”

Loki smiled charmingly, clapped his bound hands together. “I like this one. Why is that? Oh, yes… she reminds me of me.”

There was a rumble of thunder in the air, and Loki looked around, nervously. “Well, this… does not sound fortuitous.”

“Scared of a little thunder?”

“I’m not overly fond of what happens after,” Loki said.

Carol tipped her head. “We’ve got incoming--” Her eyes glowed with power and Loki watched her intently. Something slammed into the ship.

“Ah!” Stark yelled. “We uh… hit a bug. A really big lightning bug. Wearing a cape.”

“He attacked the jet,” Carol informed him. “That was a mistake.”

“Right,” Loki said. “Congratulations, ma’am. You might well be the first person to best my brother in single combat.”

“That wasn’t single combat, you Ass-gardian,” Carol snapped. “I took down an entire Kree invasion force in single combat. This was more-- switching on the alarm system. Tony, put us down somewhere and we’ll talk this out.”

“_Why_?”

“I saw this guy in Fury’s files. He’s, erm. Kind of a friendly? Ish. It’s Thor.”

“Oh, that guy,” Stark said. “Very well, you’re the boss. I’m just the guy who gets to tell you he’s got a bad feeling about this.”

For the first time in a long while, Steve found himself agreeing with his soulmate. None of this made sense, and he had a bad feeling about it.

***

“I’m not inclined to give this guy back,” Fury said. 

“He’s as crazy as a bag of cats,” Banner agreed. “You can smell the psychopath.”

Thor was a bundle of muscles in a red cloak, armor, and fierce war braids. “Loki is _family_.”

Natasha Romanoff put her hands on her hips. “He killed eighty people in four days,” she pointed out.

“He’s adopted,” Thor hedged.

“Doesn’t matter,” Carol said. “It’s not important.”

“Eighty people aren’t important, ma’am?” Rogers demanded, because of course he did. Tony’s father had always said Cap was a good man, the best. So much better than Tony, of course. More worthy. Maybe that was one of the reasons Tony had gone so far out of his way to be a wastrel. If there was no way to live up to the glory of Captain America, then he might as well sink so far below as to be beyond the comparison.

It was petty and it was stupid, and the worst part was, once Tony got down there, to the very bottom of that hole, he had no idea how to stop digging and get out. It had taken three months in a cave, in the pit of hell, for Tony to start caring at all what he’d done with his life.

_Is this your legacy, Stark?_

_I’ve seen the footage._

“As much as I agree with Captain Rogers that we can’t discard the dead,” Tony said, not looking at his soul mate, the man who hated him even more than Howard had, and it hurt even worse, and Tony was bleeding out from it, but there was nothing he could do about it except continue moving, “I’m sure there’s a reason why it’s the smaller picture.”

Across the room, Rogers flinched and stared at Tony as if betrayed. _How could you? _Tony wondered how he’d risen in Cap’s esteem enough to disappoint the man.

“Stark, you can’t just ignore--”

“One at a time, Captain Rogers, if you don’t mind,” Tony said. “Wait your turn, like it’s a slide in grade school, I’m sure you’re familiar with the concept? I asked Carol a question.”

“We still don’t have the Tesseract,” Carol said, “and we need it, but this-- this thing is… well, it’s the same.”

“And we need Loki to find the Tesseract,” Fury argued.

“No, we don’t,” Carol said. “We have me, and we have Bruce. We can find it. And, forgive me for speaking frankly, but if the Asgardians decide to come here in force, to push the issue of interrealm jurisdiction, we’re not prepared to fight that. Let Thor take him, we’ll keep the peace between our realms.” She turned to Thor. “Reparations will be expected.”

“I shall speak with our father about it,” Thor said.

“Money doesn’t wash away blood,” Rogers snapped.

“It doesn’t bring back the dead, but neither does vengeance. I can assure you, my brother will pay for his crimes.”

“Then we’re agreed,” Carol said. “You take him home, we--”

Which was, of course, when all hell broke loose.

The helicarrier wobbled dangerously, one set of the engines going out.

“Stark, put on your suit!” Rogers screamed, and Tony staggered, almost fell, but Rogers was there to catch him, to hold him up.

There was a long moment, Rogers holding Tony’s arm to steady him, and their eyes met--

“No time,” Tony said. “But we’ll continue this conversation later.”

***

Steve stared up into the sky; the speck of light that was Stark’s repulsors grew fainter. Carrying the nuclear missile. Steve knew what a nuclear bomb was, but only from reading about it.

Some idiot in their infinite wisdom, had decided that blowing up New York City, dumping radioactive fallout and killing not just a few hundred innocent bystanders, but millions of Americans, polluting the country for God only knew how long was somehow _preferable_ to finding a better way to stop the Chitauri invasion.

“Stark, what are you doing?” Steve bellowed into his comms unit.

“Making the sacrifice play. Close that portal, damn it. Romanoff, close it, close it!”

Stark-- no, Tony -- vanished into the tear in the sky.

“Tony, Tony, no!”

“One bomb’s not going to do it, Cap,” Tony reported reluctantly. “You gotta close it.”

Steve didn’t want to watch, but he couldn’t look away. Romanoff reported in--

The portal was closing, and Tony was still on the other side of it--

It closed.

“There!” A speck, falling, and then Carol was in the air, a jolt of brilliant blue. 

“I got him,” Carol reported. “He needs medical, but he’s alive.”

“I’ll meet you there,” Steve said, watching as the Chitauri machines faltered all around him, the aliens dying as soon as they were cut off.

Steve didn’t know what happened with the rest of the world; he wasn’t sure he cared. His primary goal was to get to his soul mate, to get to Tony, as soon as possible.

“You ridiculous idiot,” Steve burst out as soon as he saw Tony, the armor battered and sparking around him. He was sitting, at least, taking oxy from a plastic mask. There was a cut on his forehead, oozing blood down the side of his face, and he looked utterly exhausted, but he was alive.

“Nice to see you, too, Cap,” Tony said, and Carol scowled at him, pushing the mask back into place. “Disappointing, no one did mouth to mouth on me.”

Steve pushed into Tony’s personal space, knelt down to be on eye level. “Well, it’s not too late for that.”

Tony blinked, confusion in those toffee colored eyes. “What are you on about, Spangle--”

Steve touched his face, tipped Tony’s chin in the direction he wanted it.

And kissed his soulmate.

Behind him, Carol threw up both hands. “Well it’s about time.”


	8. The Honeymoon Conspiracy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am, finally, finished with this story. I will update one a week on Mondays now until it's finished posting! thanks for your patience, and hang on, it's about to get rough.

“Somehow, I thought finding your soulmate was supposed to be this idyllic dream,” Tony complained. Admittedly, he was complaining in bed, laying naked across Steve’s chest, while the sweat dried, and other bodily fluids grew cold and sticky. “And yet, I still need to get up and wash my thighs after sex.”

“You want me to carry you to the shower, Stark?” Steve asked, not opening his eyes. He’d been laying in Tony’s big bed for the last ten minutes, a tiny smile playing about his lips.

“You know, you just practically fucked me through the floor, you could call me Tony,” Tony said. He rolled over, and while he didn’t exactly put his elbow in Steve’s stomach, he wasn’t really careful about it either. Steve grunted, but still didn’t open his eyes.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to be overly familiar,” Steve said. He didn’t even really sound tired, which seemed unfair. They’d just defeated a metric butt ton of aliens, and then had extremely athletic sex. Out of breath might have been nice.

“You’re such an asshole,” Tony said, walking off toward the shower. His legs were a little wobbly and his ass ached. Now was probably not the time for self-recriminations, but he would have to remember, in the future, not to tell Steve to skip prep, he just wanted to be fucked, now. Because apparently the super soldier serum had done a number of things to Steve, not the least of which was give him a ridiculously huge dick, and the endurance to wield it any number of times before Tony was practically sobbing into the pillow and begging for something that might have been mercy. “I don’t know why I love you.”

“Do you?” Steve asked, and at least this time he gave Tony the courtesy of opening his eyes.

“Part and parcel, my dear, of the whole soulmate gig, right?” Tony asked; although his stomach dropped somewhere around his ankles and refused to go anywhere else. 

“I guess I expected--” Steve said, sounding puzzled. “To feel more certain. Something undeniable.”

“Flowers and ringing bells and confetti and champagne? Got news for you,” Tony said, trying for glib and not pathetically needy. “You’re in a relationship with me. Nothing’s going to be all happy, happy, joy, joy. I mean, haven’t you heard? My soulmark’s a bust anyway. Took me twenty years just to find your frozen ass.”

Jesus. Tony had given up everything, everything for this man, and Steve was still finding him _inadequate_? Deniable.

_Uncertain_.

That was an ugly word that Tony had never expected to find such.

“I’m asking because I don’t know,” Steve said.

“Are you asking me if I’m certain I’m in love with you,” Tony wondered, rinsing a wash cloth in warm water. “Or are you telling me that you’re not in love with me?”

“Neither. Both. I don’t know,” Steve said. “I just expected it to be… a more noticeable change, I guess.”

“Well, neither of us is what you’d call regular soulmates,” Tony said, trying for reasonable. “You were blown up like a magic-gro pill and I knew I was supposed to be Captain America’s soulmate since I was four years old.”

“It… feels incomplete somehow,” Steve said, putting a hand on his chest. “Like there’s supposed to be _more_.”

Tony finished cleaning up, threw the washcloth at the laundry chute and missed by a mile. “Well, that sounds familiar,” he ranted, stalking out of the bathroom and grabbing his clothes. “Not good enough, I know. I’ve heard it before. Why-- why am I getting ready to walk out, this is my room, _you _should go.”

“Why would you assume this is on you?” Steve demanded. “If you would stop jumping to conclusions and talk to me-- I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel, I… I never wanted this to be you.”

Tony thought he was going to have a heart attack right there on the spot. The arc-reactor cycled away as usual, the shrapnel in his chest stayed right where it was supposed to be. Nothing changed, but every bit of blood drained from Tony’s face. He expected to look down and see it pooling on the floor. 

“Well, it is me,” Tony snapped. “So I guess it really doesn’t matter if you don’t love me. You’re just stuck.”

“I didn’t-- Tony, I didn’t say that. Please, will you just-- help me understand,” Steve said. “I thought it would be different, that’s all.”

Tony took a breath, air that was bad and solid and didn’t want to go into his lungs, but it was something, he supposed. Enough so that he could keep talking. “So tell me what the problem is,” Tony said. “If it’s not me. It’s not me, it’s you, I’ve heard it so many times--”

Steve at least, didn’t look happy about it. He was wretched, face screwed up, near tears it seemed. “I thought-- I thought it would go away, if I found my soulmate. That’s why. I never really believed it was you. But it is you, I mean, I know it _is_, because watching you-- I thought you were going to die and all I could think was _I never got to tell him that I love him_.”

Some greedy little part of him that had never quite died out or shut up grabbed hold of that with both hands and tried to squeeze every drop of satisfaction out of it. “But? There’s always a but.”

Steve sighed. “I still love Bucky. I still miss him. Every day. Even-- even after _that_.” Steve gestured to the bed, face pinking a little. “I mean, that was amazing, Tony, it-- was incredible and… and I still miss him. It’s selfish of me, horrible. Unfair to you. I thought -- I mean, that’s part of why I was fighting with you, all the time. I thought, if I let myself care about you, what I felt for him was going to be _meaningless_, and I didn’t want that.”

“Um, not to be Debbie Downer on your party or anything, Cap,” Tony said, and watched Steve flinch, either from being called Cap, or from what he suspected Tony was about to say. “But James Barnes has been dead for _seventy years_.”

“Not in my life, Tony,” Steve said. “For me? He’s been dead for less than _six months_. He was my best friend, he saved my life, I would have died for him. I did die for him. I wanted to die, for him.”

“Well, you didn’t,” Tony said, more than a little bitter. “You lived. And I lived. We’re just going to have to deal with that. And-- and I love you, whether you like it or not.” For fuck’s sake, could he get any more pathetic. He was going to end up on his knees, begging Steve to care about him, even a little bit.

“Tony--” And then they were both on the floor and Tony was crying, he couldn’t help it, he was crying, and Steve was holding him. Simultaneously the most horrible thing he’d ever been through and the best. Someone to actually _hold him_, while he wept. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything. I just… thought there might be something wrong with me.”

Tony wiped his nose on his tee, feeling utterly pathetic and ridiculous, naked on the floor, crying. “Yeah, there is--” He gulped, then went on. “No, look, I-- I haven’t been looking at this from your point of view. I mean, you’re Captain America, you’re supposed to be perfect. But-- you lost everything, and here’s this whole new world that you don’t know where you belong. Of course you miss your friends. I lost-- when I went to… when Ten Rings kidnapped me. I lost everything. All that was left was fear and pain and… the hope that things might get better. If I could escape. But you can’t, can you?”

“I don’t think so, no,” Steve said. “As much as it feels to me like I traveled through time--”

“You kinda did. Just, one day at a time, just like the rest of us.”

“There’s no way back,” Steve said. And then he gave Tony a little shake. “And this is important, Tony, so listen to me, okay?”

“I’m listening.”

“Even if I could go back,” Steve said, folding Tony into his arms. “I wouldn’t go. I… this world scares me, and when I’m not scared, I’m annoyed by it. But you’re here, and I’m… I’m not going to leave you. Okay?”

Just when Tony thought he couldn’t sink any lower, he found himself asking in a tiny voice, “Promise?”

“I promise. I do love you, you know. Arrogant, ridiculous bastard and everything.”

“I may swoon under the strength of your regard,” Tony said. It was more bravado than anything, but it was a start. “Love you, too. Asshole.”

Steve just laughed, and Tony thought, maybe. _Maybe_. Everything was going to be all right.

***

Steve thumbed through the old files; Bucky was dead, fallen off the train in Switzerland, body never recovered. Surviving relatives, two nephews and three nieces. His last living sister had died the year before Steve came out of the ice.

Dum-dum Dugan was dead. That stupid hat of his was on display in a museaum somewhere. Steve wondered if Tony would pay to have it replaced with a replica so that Steve could return it to Dugan’s surviving granddaughter.

Gabe Jones was dead. He had a surviving grandson, Atoinne Triplett, who was a SHIELD Agent. Steve made a note in his file to visit with the man, talk to him. There was a note in the file that Trip, as he preferred to be called, had an entire briefcase full of special gear from the Commandos, and Steve would love to see it.

He continued to look through the files, not really noticing that it was getting darker, that he was sitting in the dark, in his terrible apartment. SHIELD had provided it.

Technically, Steve was supposed to be moving out. Headed to the Tower where he would theoretically live on the floor below Tony’s, but everyone knew that it was merely pretense. They would… get married. Live together.

Like soulmates ought to.

Like he and Bucky had planned to.

It wasn’t Tony’s fault. None of this was Tony’s fault, but that rage inside Steve grew. It was unfair. 

Steve wasn’t supposed to be trapped here in this future, with a soul mate he hadn’t asked for. 

He liked Tony well enough, Steve supposed. He was braver than Steve had expected -- bravery being an entirely different thing from foolhardy, which is what Howard had been. Howard hadn’t been brave; he just never expected to die, so he was willing to do a lot.

And he _loved _Tony, because the odd compulsion that was a soulmate bond seemed to think he _should_. When he was with Tony, everything seemed fine; the man was gloriously sarcastic, wickedly intelligent, and sincerely flirtatious. When Steve was with Tony, is was an effort to keep up with that genius brain, and Tony was always moving, always busy, always doing three things at once. It was like courting a whirlwind and Steve needed all his attention for it.

It wasn’t until the early mornings when Tony would stagger in from his lab and collapse, face down, on the bed, or when Steve was alone, that Steve started to wonder. Why wasn’t this easy? Why wasn’t it _enough_ for him? 

Sometimes he wondered if there was something wrong with him; if the serum had done something. Not just to change his body, but had changed his heart.

_What is good becomes great; what is bad becomes worse._

Steve had never been satisfied, even before he became a soldier. He’d been angry, all the time. Angry at the world. 

With Bucky, being the only bright spot in a world that was dim and ugly and cruel.

Maybe it was just he never got closure with Bucky. They didn’t even have a funeral. Military protocol, which gave the dead a year and a day to be found, if there was no body.

There was no way Bucky could have survived the fall, and even if he had, they were out in the middle of nowhere.

Steve wondered if Phillips had ever sent a team looking to recover Bucky’s body, the same way Howard had spent years trying to find Steve.

Phillips was dead, too, according to Steve’s files, with no surviving relations.

The war had killed so many, and hadn’t left a lot behind but ruin.

Steve tapped his phone. “JARVIS, is Tony available?”

“Yes sir, Captain Rogers, let me patch you through.”

“Hey, darling,” Tony said, cheerfully. “I’m elbows deep in the guts of one of the suits, but I can spare you a few minutes. What can I do for you… or to you?”

Steve couldn’t help the smile. Tony was always, as the kids said it these days, _horny on main_. “I want to go to Fort Lehigh.”

“What on earth for? No, nevermind, if you want to go, please, go,” Tony said. “You’re Captain America, they’ll probably throw you a parade. In fact, I think there’s a statue of you there. Do you want to make a date of it? I can get a picnic lunch and we can take one of the convertibles?”

Steve nodded, realized Tony couldn’t see him. “Yeah, I’d like that. I’m trying to find some closure; it’s not fair to you that I’m living in the past, so I want to kind of-- sweep out all the cobwebs, I guess.”

“Sounds dusty, but I’m game for it if you are, sweetheart. Day after tomorrow good for you?”

“Sure,” Steve said. “So long as we don’t get a call to assemble.”

“Assuming the world isn’t coming to an end to ruin date night sounds like a good assumption to make. Love you. Mwah.”

Steve disconnected the call, and leaned back in his chair. It occurred to him after the fact that he probably should have returned the sentiment. Tony seemed to be the sort who needed to hear it. _Regularly_.

Well, it didn’t much matter, Steve thought. He’d tell Tony later.


	9. What Once Was Lost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... the arrival of the Winter Soldier

He didn’t have a name; not that he knew. Sometimes his handlers and techs called him The Asset, or sometimes The American. Once or twice, he’d heard that someone else called him the Winter Soldier.

Sometimes the Director called him the Fist of Hydra.

None of it mattered.

He was rarely awake long enough for it to matter; although if he was allowed to have opinions, none of them ever seemed quite right. Soldier, however, was close enough. He remembered many people barking Soldier at him.

And once, deep inside, and deathly quiet, he heard _ain’t we gonna go dancin’, Sarge?_

And _Jerk_.

When he woke up, he wasn’t screaming. He never screamed when he woke; the pain of waking was terrible, bone splintering, choking, spluttering, freezing, skin cracking and healing, over and over--

But he was _awake_.

Somehow, he always managed to bite back those screams.

There was a strength inside him, a tiny fire, so deep in the blackness of his mind that he couldn’t see the light from it, could barely feel the heat of it, but he knew it was there, and it was some small comfort. _I’m here._

The soldier was ordered into the showers to clean up -- waking up was messy, sweat and puke and waste -- and then given clothes and nutritional supplements. 

“You have a meeting in one hour with the Director,” someone told him.

The soldier acknowledged the order. It didn’t matter. Someone would come for him before the hour, and take him where he was required. He was never late.

He dressed; tactical gear, a comm unit for his ear. Weapons. He checked the arm; functional, if a bit stiff. After the meeting, he would put in for maintenance. 

The soldier ate the food left for him, bars of protein, a slurry drink of vitamins. He barely tasted it, but when it was gone, he found himself looking for the crumbs.

He was always hungry. Never enough to impair his functionality. But there was always something missing. Some emptiness inside him that could never be filled with calories. 

Except this time, there was something new. Something new for the first time in decades of sleep and waking periods. Something new, in this realm of cold, in his world of black and white and red.

He pressed his hand to his chest; the fire there was warmer. Brighter. He could almost, somehow, see it.

_I’m here._

“The Director will see you know,” someone said, and the soldier followed. 

The soldier had been many places; the camps in Siberia, many hotel rooms and business conference rooms and bunkers and safe houses. This was someplace different. A bank, it seemed, ancient and forgotten, with vaults on the walls.

The Director and another man were in a room, the Director behind a desk, looking at paper. The other man behind him, guarding.

The soldier didn’t bother to roll his eyes. 

“There you are,” the Director said, as if the soldier was late, but it was a fond scold. Like a favored son. “We have a problem I’d like you to take care of.”

The soldier raised his eyes. The Director was old, the column of his throat no longer smooth, his cheeks sagging, ears longer than they used to be. He had an old man’s nose and an old man’s hands, thick knuckled and veiny.

How long had it been, the soldier wondered. It wasn’t anything he needed to know, but sometimes, sometimes he wanted to know it. But he wasn’t allowed to have wants, barely allowed necessities, and he knew better than to say anything.

“One of our facilities has come under scrutiny. We expect a team of highly trained individuals to attempt to locate, and either subvert or destroy the Asset known as Dr. Zola.”

The soldier didn’t so much as twitch, even if that name raised unpleasant pseudomemories, an emotional stain on his heart.

_I’m here._

“You will dispatch to Fort Lehigh and the underground base in the company of Rumlow and his Strike Team. You will eliminate the threat to our Asset. In extreme desperation, recover the files Zola will prepare for you, and destroy the Asset rather than let it fall into enemy hands. Do you understand?”

The soldier raised his eyes, nodded, let them lower again.

“Very well,” the Director said. “Rumlow, he’s all yours.”

“Come on, cupcake, let’s go,” Rumlow said.

The soldier didn’t bother to roll his eyes.

* * *

Rumlow, who viciously refuted being called Captain with a backswing of one hard-knuckled hand, was a poor leader.

He ruled his men with cuffs and the occasional threat of gun or knife. The ones that weren’t cowed by him were just as brutal and careless of other people’s lives as Rumlow. They talked about women they probably hadn’t had willingly, and men they’d killed. The Soldier was content not to be part of their cadre. 

For the most part, the Strike Team treated the Soldier as if he was a particularly heavy piece of equipment; they cursed him, and shoved, and told him where to go.

But he wasn’t a person to them. Which was all right; the Soldier was never quite certain of his own status as _person_.

They didn’t specifically tell him anything, either, but that was fine. The Soldier knew how to listen, he knew how to pay attention.

They expected no more than two; one who wore power armor, and the other that was derisively referred to as _Captain_ in such a voice that the Soldier understood why Rumlow had reacted badly to the honorific. Whoever this Captain was, Rumlow hated him.

That was bad soldiering, too. 

Hating the enemy was pointless. It made a soldier take risks out of hatred, out of need to slaughter.

The Soldier only needed a target, and he would, eventually, get his man.

They were more concerned about the man with the shield, the Captain, than the other. When the Strike Team had bedded down for the night, aside from one who was on watch, the Soldier approached the War Table to look at the intel.

The Soldier opened the file to a picture of a man.

_I am here._

This man.

The Soldier knew this man, somehow. Even if he’d never seen him before. This man. There was something about this man.

_Sergeant Barnes? My wife, help my wife--_

The Soldier flipped past the picture, looking at the intel for the suit design.

“What are you doing?” A hand came down on the pages, slamming them to the table.

The Soldier looked up didn’t bother to look up, didn’t bother to defend himself, or say anything. He put his hands behind his back and stepped away from the table. What he was doing was -- or should be -- obvious. If it wasn’t, then they were going to send him in ill prepared. It wouldn’t be the first time.

“Let’s get this straight, you frozen, prehistoric piece of shit,” Rumlow sneered. “You do what I say, when I say it. You got that?”

The Soldier didn’t bother to answer.

“You look at me when I’m talkin’ to you,” Rumlow barked. The Soldier raised his eyes, slanted them at Rumlow. 

“The mission-- the mission will go smoother, sir,” the soldier said. Cold. Calm. “If I might familiarize myself with the Targets.”

“The mission?”

“Sir.”

“Right, that’s all this is to you, a mission.”

The Soldier didn’t answer that. _Sarcasm detected._

Two pictures, suddenly, on the table. The man from the combat armor, and another man, blond and tall. 

“They’re just Targets. Just the mission?”

The Soldier looked up again. “Yes, sir.”

“And you’ll kill them, just like that?”

The Soldier shouldn’t need to answer that question. When had he ever done anything aside from follow orders? He would kill whoever Hydra needed to be killed. Even this asshole, practically breathing in his face, demanding respect that he should already know he didn’t have. Hydra wasn’t about a single Soldier, or a Strike Team Leader. _Cut off one head, and two more come back._

But Rumlow seemed to need the reassurance. “Yes, sir.”

“Good. You remember that.”

The Soldier didn’t answer. There was no point.

But his eyes did drift back to the photographs.

_I am here._

* * *

If the Soldier had formed any expectations of the events to come, aside from kill the targets, move on, he hadn’t bothered to put it into words.

As it was, the fight was more difficult than he could possibly have imagined. The Strike Team was down, aside from Rumlow, in a matter of seconds, bashed over the head with a -- _you’re keepin’ the uniform, right_ \-- shield, or knocked over by a repulsor blast.

The Soldier had lined up the shot perfectly, with the ammo provided by the Strike Team’s quartermaster, a high powered bullet designed specifically to stop enhanced people in their tracks. The man in the blue uniform -- _don’t do anything stupid, how can I, you’re taking all the stupid with you_ \-- had his hands on his waist, drawing attention to his broad shoulders. He was looking around, waving a gloved hand. The shield was on his back, so the Soldier aimed a few centimeters over its protective curve.

And fired.

Which was where everything started to go wrong.

The red power armor was faster than anticipated; intercepting the Soldier’s shot with a mini-missile launched from a shoulder pack.

The fight, what little of it there was, didn’t last long.

The Soldier managed to launch himself at the armoured man’s back, wrenched him over. That blue glow from his chest seemed important somehow, and the Soldier dug fingers into the armor, trying to break or crush it.

“Tony, no!” the other man yelled, knocking the soldier over with a single blow from that shield, knocking his tactical glasses askew, cracking the face mask that protected the soldier from gas and nerve toxins. 

The Soldier rose to his feet, holding the shield, which seemed somehow comforting in his hand. Like it knew him.

The other soldier, the Captain -- _Let’s hear it for Captain America_ \-- paused, staring. Dumbstruck.

“Bucky?”

“Who the hell is Bucky?” the soldier demanded, shocked. It sounded _familiar_.

The armoured man staggered to his feet, lined up a shot. The blue thing in his chest spluttered, crackled.

“No, no, it’s Bucky!”

The shot missed, but tore through his artificial arm, ripped it off at the bicep. Nerves and electronics went haywire. He couldn’t see, could hear nothing but static, crackling electricity.

The soldier fell forward, hit the ground, gagging on sudden agony.

“Bucky, Bucky!” The Captain was holding him, pushing him upright. The Soldier knocking him off. They were going to kill him. He was going to die.

He was going to fail his mission.

“Bucky, no, I ain’t gonna fight you pal, you’re my friend.”

“You’re my mission.” The soldier staggered to his feet. Pulled a knife.

“Steve!”

_That little guy from Brooklyn who didn’t know when to walk away, I’m followin’ him._

“Tony, don’t--”

Something blue and brilliant hit the Soldier in the face, blinding him. He clawed at it with his single hand, but there was nothing--

He fell, into darkness.


	10. The True Soulmark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is late. I got bad news yesterday and I was overwhelmed. Forgot to post.

Tony had his hand over the arc-reactor, guarding it. Protecting it. The casing was cracked. Steve knew that because the doctor had told them. It wouldn’t hurt Tony immediately, but the casing would have to be replaced. Tony had experienced heavy metal poisoning before, and while the new element kept his blood toxicity low, there were all sorts of infections and bacteria that could build up in a crack. So, replaced.

Which was dangerous, because Tony couldn’t live without the electromagnet that kept the shrapnel around his heart from killing him.

Tony could have died.

Steve told himself that extra firm. Tony could have died, and Steve would have lost his soulmate.

He wasn’t sure if he was just in shock, or if he really wasn’t that upset, or if he was upset with himself for not being upset.

Feelings were complicated, and they weren’t supposed to be.

His soulmate almost died.

And his best friend almost killed him.

And then his soulmate had almost killed his best friend.

So what did that mean?

“You know he’s not the same guy you knew,” Tony said, softly. “I don’t know what they did to him, but we’ll fix it. He’s not--” Tony looked like the words were going to make him sick, just to say it. “He’s not responsible.”

“He’s in there,” Steve said. It was a true fact. He knew it, the same way he knew his own name. “Bucky’ll come back to me.”

“I’m sure he will,” Tony said, and there was a bite to that, an undercut of sarcasm.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

But Steve knew what it meant, didn’t he? Like he was at Bucky’s bedside while Tony was undergoing an exam, like he didn’t move from Bucky’s bedside when Tony was injured. Like--

“Steve,” Tony said. “Look, I know, okay. You don’t have to hide it from me.”

Okay, so now Steve was confused. “Know what?”

“He has your soulmark.”

The entire bottom of Steve’s world dropped out. “_You_ have my soulmark,” Steve protested automatically. But they were rote words, spoken in shock. Hadn’t he known? Hadn’t he always known?

“No, Steve,” Tony said, like the words weighed a hundred pounds each and Steve was forcing Tony to carry them. “I’ve looked at pictures of them. Studied them side by side. Very carefully. Mine’s… it’s not the same. Yours matches his. Mine’s… just an anomaly.”

“But you found me,” Steve said, and he finally, finally managed to turn and look at Tony, but it was already too late. Because his heart was pounding too hard, and-- he knew it, he’d always known it.

“I found you through math and luck and time. Even an idiot can find a needle in a haystack with enough time and a damn magnet. Look-- hell, look at his _arm_. Your symbol is _his mark_. You two were… _meant _to be together.”

“Your--”

“Mine is close,” Tony admitted. “Red star, yes. But if you look closely. There are differences. Between mine and yours. I’m not your mate. I never was. I was just an idiot who fell in love.”

And Tony walked off.

It wasn’t a grand sweeping exit, but the simple pace of a man with nothing left to say.

And maybe it was the nail in the coffin.

Because Steve couldn’t bring himself to follow.

* * *

“It --He’s asking to see you,” one of the SHIELD agents said, intercepting Tony before he could get to the safety of his lab.

Armin Zola.

“Seriously, that guy gives new meaning to the word heebie jeebies,” Tony said. They’d found -- after Barnes was contained and the base locked down -- a _thing_. A thing, claiming to be a man. Claiming to be a man that had known Howard Stark, Steve Rogers, James Barnes.

Somehow, Tony thought, Zola might be at the center of everything.

Which did not mean he wanted to go down and get cuddly with him. 

“How did he even get here?”

“Operation Paperclip,” the Agent said, eyes flitting from one corner of the room to the other. “An arrangement with some of the Hydra scientists, after the war.”

“Yeah, can’t say that ever sounded like a good plan,” Tony said.

“Your father signed off on it, sir.”

“Case in point,” Tony sighed. He really just wanted to go somewhere and sulk, mourn, throw an epic, nay, heroic sized temper tantrum.

But he was _exhausted_.

Well, probably a good time to deal with Zola, when he was too emotionally dead inside to give a fuck. “Get me an EMP handheld,” Tony said. That would do all sorts of fun shit to his arc-reactor,but he wasn’t about to risk something like Zola getting away. Or subverting him. God only knew. AI was one thing, transference of intellect to a mechanical was something else entirely.

“JARVIS, pull up the building schematics, figure out where he’s getting his power from, make sure we can cut it, if we need to,” Tony said.

_Something _to do, something to _do_, so that he didn’t have to think about what a fucking joke his life was.

“Make sure we’re recording,” Tony added. It was only science if you wrote it down. 

“Anthony Edward Stark,” a creepy voice said as soon as Tony stepped into the vault they’d discovered in the bunkers underneath Fort Lehigh. “Born May 29, 1970 to Howard and Maria Stark.”

“You look like you were born not much after that,” Tony invited, staring at database banks that were run on fucking _tape_. “Desperately in need of an upgrade.”

“You are right, Mr. Stark,” Zola said, appearing in one of the monitors as a face with dark glasses, surrounded by the types of green and black lines of text that Tony associated with bad movie. “Your father was also a futurist, he saw much, and very clearly. One of my last acts while I still had a body and a heart, was to help bring you into this world.”

“And now I’m here to take you out of it,” Tony said. “Circle of life, this is a lion, a baby lion, and a really bad song. What do you want?”

“Your father once asked me the same question. What did I want,” Zola mused. “I helped his projects. He helped me build this. I see that you found him, at last.”

“Captain America, yeah, a year or so back, dug him up out of the ice,” Tony said, trying to pretend that didn’t hurt.

“Your soulmate,” Zola said, humming with malicious knowledge. “And not, at the same time. Tell me, Mr. Stark, would you like to know the truth?”

Tony would, in fact, like to know. “And what do you want?” Because of course Zola wanted something. He always wanted something. Hydra, Zola, Red Skull, they’d all wanted _something_. And it seemed, in the end, they would always come to Starks in order to get it.

“Humanity cannot be trusted with its own freedom,” Zola said. “They crave order and security, and these things do not come from freedom. But if you try to take it, they will resist.”

“Skip the Hydra recruiting speech. If you know anything about me at all, it’s that I will, in fact, always do exactly what I want,” Tony snapped.

“You are right, of course. You Starks do exactly as you please. No loyalty to a cause greater than yourself. You are the cause, aren’t you?” Zola’s voice was mocking. “You were made for him, you know. _Created_.”

Tony didn’t know what to say; his jaw clenched up and his throat was tight. “No, I wasn’t,” he finally managed. 

“You were. I know, because I helped to create you. Anthony Edward Stark. My great achievement. And you don’t even know it.”

Images flashed, lab reports and photos. Dates. His mother, her stomach round with pregnancy, talking to Howard while a nurse injected her with something.

“What did you do to her?”

“Nothing, Mr. Stark,” Zola purred. “She was almost entirely incidental. Although, to be safe, she was kept on a benzodiazepine-sedative for most of her remaining life. To keep her from remembering, and to prevent any interaction with the serum. We couldn't risk any of the serum being dormant in her blood. We didn’t need her. We needed you.”

“Took me forty two years to find your precious captain, and Red Skull wasn’t with him,” Tony said. “You failed. At whatever you were trying to do.”

“You say that like I am running out of time, Mr. Stark,” Zola said. “I am immortal. Hydra is immortal.”

“Hydra died with the Red Skull.”

“Cut off one head,” Zola responded. “We’re here. We’ve always been here. You cannot eradicate us without eradicating yourselves. And you-- you are our creation, Mr. Stark. The world will crumble around you, if it knows. To protect yourself, you will protect us. To keep your secrets.”

Tony, who had grown up with paps and reporters and photographers up in his business, who had withstood blackmail attempts, who’d been kidnapped and watched his father refuse to negotiate, wondered if Zola had any idea what Tony actually would be able to protect. 

From the moment he stood up in front of a crowd of reporters and announced that he was, in fact, Iron Man--

Privacy had never been a thing he had. 

Secrets were never a thing he had.

Or so he thought.

How had Howard managed to keep this -- this perversion -- a secret? 

And then Tony wondered if he’d known, and never admitted to himself that he had. Even with Captain America’s soul mark, hadn’t Tony always felt less than worthy? 

Steve had said it himself; he expected it to be more.

Bucky was _more_, and Tony was just an unwanted, unneeded spare. A disappointment. Not enough. When had he ever been enough?

“You think blackmail’s gonna stop me from doing whatever I want?”

“The public practically worships your late father,” Zola said. “You would see his memory tarnished in your lifetime?”

“Pretty sure Howard doesn’t care anymore. Jay?”

“Is there something I can do for you, sir?”

“Cut him off,” Tony said. 

“That has already been accomplished, sir,” JARVIS said easily. “The program known as Zola can no longer access the grid, and I am in the process of removing secondary power couplings-- there we are, sir. The program known as Zola is confined, entirely, to this room.”

“Great. Why don’t you sit down here, Boobtube, and think about that. There’s no reason why we can’t put your databanks in jail.”

It seemed like a good line to walk out on.

So he did. “Shut him down, shut him up, lock him in.” _Lock me out._

Tony strode out of the room, answering no questions, despite a squad of SHIELD agents trying their best--

“Keep that room shut until further notice,” Tony snapped. “And get the fuck out of my way.”

JARVIS had a suit for him before he even made it down the stairs of the armory. Ignoring the babble and fuss, Tony stepped into it and launched himself skyward before the plating had even finished spinning into place.

“Home, Jay, you can drive.”

And somehow, JARVIS knew just what he needed. JARVIS had always known what he needed. 

They were back in Malibu, standing on what was left of Tony’s old mansion, the rest of the rubble sunk in the sea, rocks and tons of concrete and what had once been great art, a beautiful piano, several really nice cars.

_My life in ruins._

Just like this--

Ruins.


	11. Cut Open and Bleeding

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> added picture from ssyn3 which is what inspired this piece. Obviously there've been some actual changes in writing, but thematically, this was the piece I was working with

The Soldier -- _ you’re Bucky, don’t you remember? _ \-- was pulled. Drawn. Like a magnet that he’d been searching for his whole life and had never even known he was looking. 

Not that he remembered most of his whole life, and what he did remember was pain and blood and terror and regret.

But even in the midst of that, there was a longing. A sense that he might be able to come home, to lay down his burdens and rest his head on a tender breast and be at peace.

Without even knowing what it was.

He was restrained, and that was not unusual. Hydra had often kept him in cuffs and collars. Temperamental, the handlers would say. A high-risk Asset. The very things that made him great, that made him the Fist of Hydra, also made him a monster. He was dedicated to the idea of a perfect world, but sometimes he didn’t know what that looked like.

Everyone had told him so, in words, in actions. He was making the world a better place.

And he was a monster.

He knew the man in the blue uniform. He didn’t know why he knew that man, or who he was, but somewhere in the depths of his ruined soul, the man was a balm.

There was another man. A dark-haired, lean man with a clever mouth and deep eyes.

Who looked at the Soldier as if the Soldier had done something unforgivable.

Which should not have mattered -- the Soldier had done many unforgivable things. He was a monster, after all, and it wasn’t the place of monsters to find forgiveness.

But it tore at the Soldier, the way tears and fears and prayers never had. The way--

“Bucky, I brought you some food,” the other man, the first man, was saying, and the Soldier turned his attention toward the man, and the tray of food. “I’m not supposed to, you’re supposed to get all your nutrients from the IV, at least for a while, but I’ve been in the hospital and it’s not very satisfying. I thought-- what harm could it do?”

The Soldier didn’t answer because he didn’t know the answer. It was always, always better to be mute than wrong. Would it do harm?

The Soldier didn’t know.

“Are you hungry?” He sat on the edge of the bed. Feeling safe, maybe, because the Soldier was chained down. But these weren’t the special magnetic locks. The Soldier could break free, with some effort. And even without it, there was no reason why he couldn’t flip over and kill the man with a well-aimed kick.

But he didn’t want to. He didn’t know why he didn’t want to.

So he waited.

“Buck? You hungry?”

“Who is Bucky?”

“You are, pal,” the man said. “It’s okay if you don’t remember. I’ll keep reminding you of what you need to know.”

Well, didn’t that sound familiar. He glanced at the man, trying not to let his distrust show, but it was probably pretty obvious. He knew some people could lie, but he didn’t remember how to.

The Soldier was used to people telling him what to do, where to go, what he remembered, what the truth was.

The Soldier didn’t know anymore.

Because of the pull.

It seemed like the pull was coming from the man, but also-- through the man. From somewhere -- someone -- else.

“Yes,” the soldier decided. He wasn’t entirely sure what he meant by that, but hungry, quite possibly that was a fact. He was hungry. He rattled one wrist against the cuff. Heavier than a normal cuff, but it wouldn’t hold him for long if he decided he wanted out. If he was ordered to break out. 

His mission was the same. Protect Zola. 

“I can’t let you out, Buck,” the man said. “Now you get to see how it feels. Remember, you used to feed me broth when I was sick, could barely even hold a spoon without spilling. Nothing to be ashamed of, you would say. Just needed to be done.”

The man offered him a strip of sandwich, cut up into small, bite sized pieces. 

The Soldier let himself be fed like an infant. There was no shame in it. Just what needed to be done.

The Soldier ate, chewing slowly. He didn’t always eat food; bread, meat, cheese, a little dab of sauce. A lettuce leaf. He usually drank a high-protein slurry mix that met his needs.

But didn’t taste good, the way this _ tasted _ good. He chewed slowly, savouring the experience.

A few slices of fruit. Pudding, from a plastic container.

It wasn’t enough, not nearly, and it was gone too soon.

“So, uh,” the man said, after the Soldier returned to a resting position, attentive, but not curious, listening but not asking questions. “My name’s Steve. Steve Rogers. We-- we grew up together. You were my best friend growing up. Your name is James Buchanan Barnes. You’re my friend.”

“You’re my mission,” the Soldier responded when it seemed obvious that the Mission was waiting for something, some answer.

“I’m your friend,” Mission insisted. “And your soulmate.” 

He tugged up his shirt, showing off the mark. A red star, silver background. “Just like yours.”

“Mission briefing,” the Soldier said, “claimed Captain Rogers has a soulmate. Anthony E. Stark.”

The Mission flinched. “No, that was a mistake. It’s not exactly right. But we didn’t know, Buck. You don’t have to worry about that. I’m here for you.”

“No,” the Soldier said. “You’re not my friend. You’re not my soulmate. You’re my Mission. That’s all.”

The Mission closed his eyes briefly. “You’re not well,” he said. “You’re not yourself. I’m-- we’ll talk about this again later.”

The Soldier waited until the Mission was out of the room, ignoring the last longing look that the Mission threw at him just before he finally went away.

And then the Soldier started working on getting the hell out of here and finding out what that other pull was.

* * *

He was so stupid. He couldn’t stay away. He was gone less than two days before he flew back to New York, the more conventional way. At least it kept Carol from asking any stupid questions that Tony didn’t have answers for.

No change. Barnes was still in a bed, and if he knew Tony was looking at him from the other side of the mirrored glass, he didn’t let it show. Tony stood there for a few minutes, drawn by something he didn’t understand. 

He wanted to hate Barnes. But he didn’t. He didn’t want to love Steve. But he did.

Tony looked in the mirror. 

He had his tee pulled up so he could study the reflection; the arc-reactor’s light muffled by the black fabric.

Sometimes he hated that reactor; it was hard to sleep with something so bright going off in his face all the time, but these days, he was mostly used to it. He bunched the tee up again so that most of the light was blocked. He wanted to study the pattern of his soulmark.

Everyone told him it couldn’t be done; there was no way to duplicate a soul mark. There was no way to make one go away. Beyond the inevitable death of a soulmate, in which case the mark would fade, like a worn out letter.

He had the pictures, high definition, close ups. 

Tony looked in the mirror.

He looked at the photographs.

He could pick his soul mark out easily between the three.

His was the one with the pale blue-ish glow. At first, he’d thought it might have been a lighting error, but when his was blocked off with a surgical window, it was right there, for all the world to see.

Anyone in the world could tell which one was Tony’s.

Bucky and Steve’s stars were identical, red star, silver-white background.

Tony’s had a blueish cast over the whole thing.

Tony’s hand shook and he glared at his fingers like he could stop his nerves by will alone.

“Stark men are iron,” he said. His hand steadied.

He knew what he was going to do was stupid.

He knew it wouldn’t work. Everyone always said that it didn’t work, you couldn’t _ remove _ a soulmate mark. You couldn’t cut it off or burn it out or conceal it with another tattoo.

But everyone also said you couldn’t make one, and Howard had proven that false. He’d proven it false and then he’d had the nerve to die before anything could be proven. Son of a bitch.

Tony needed to see. He needed to prove it.

If it was a real mark, maybe it would come back.

It’s not a real mark, he told himself firmly. Stop being a little bitch about it. Cut it, see what happens. Write it down, it’s not science unless you write it down.

“Observation one,” Tony dictated. “Primary subject, artificially induced soul mark.”

Tony inhaled, deep. Held it.

This was going to hurt.

The first slice did not actually hurt, the blade was too keen for his nerves to recognize that anything at all had happened. There was a heated wetness, blood, against his skin.

There was a matching wetness on Tony’s face. Tears.

He couldn’t allow his own personal pain, his own personal grief, any leeway. He’d always known he was meant for Steve Rogers, but it was plain that he’d been lied to his entire life, he’d been betrayed and deceived, treated like a test subject.

And all it had done was caused a good man pain.

Steve must be so relieved, now, to be able to stop pretending.

The second slice was going to be harder, and his hand was shaking again. Quick, quick--

“No.”

Tony jerked involuntarily, the blade skating over the surface of the mark, splitting it neatly in two.

Someone hissed in pain, and it wasn’t Tony. Barnes was there, dressed in scrubs and the remains of his hospital gown. His feet were bare and his hair was oily and tangled. A handcuff dangled from his flesh wrist, and he put that hand on Tony’s wrist, stopping him. “What are you doing?”

Tony tried to wrench his wrist away, to finish the work. It didn’t really matter, proof was had, the wound would scar, it wouldn’t heal over and everyone would know, they would know, and it was the truth that Tony’s mark was a lie.

“Let _ go _\--”

“Why are you doing that?”

“It’s a lie, it’s a fucking lie, don’t you see that?”

“Is it so bad?” Barnes asked. “Am I-- so bad?”

“You?” Tony stared, suddenly sure they were having two different conversations. He let go of the bloody scalpel and it fell to the floor. The pain came back in a huge wave, threatening to swallow him. “It’s nothing to do with _ you _.”

“It has _ everything _ to do with me.” Barnes said, and he placed that metal hand over Tony’s wound. The fingers were warm, and Tony wondered why he hadn’t expected that. Of course metal with power running through it was _ warm _. Hadn’t dozens of men made themselves sterile by keeping their laptops on their legs? “We need to bandage this. You’re bleeding.”

“I know I’m bleeding,” Tony hissed between clenched teeth. “That was kind of the point, dumbass.”

Barnes swallowed hard. “You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to hurt yourself. I’ll go.”

Tony choked. Steve would leave with Barnes. That was as true as the sun rising in the east. Constant and unaltering. Would it be worth it, to have them gone, but also, to never, ever see Steve again?

It didn’t matter, god damn it. It didn’t matter to Tony that it was a lie, that Howard had done this somehow. He loved Steve, he was always going to goddamn love Steve and it was a coin toss which was going to hurt more, watching him with Barnes, or never seeing him again.

Barnes made a sound, some incomprehensible noise, and then peeled Tony’s tee shirt off. He was practical, and Tony had laid out post-impromptu surgery tools anyway. Barnes swabbed out Tony’s wounds, two cuts, one much neater than the other, cleaning the blood away, soothing and soft. He sterilized the wounds, applied pressure until the bleeding slowed, and then used butterfly bandaids to hold the sides of the slices together.

_ Please don’t leave me. _

And Tony didn’t know who that was directed at. Steve, or Barnes.

“There,” Barnes said, wrapping a long swath of bandage around Tony’s middle. He was kissing close, heat baking off that super soldier body. 

And why did Tony think a damn thing like _ that _?

“I--”

“You--”

They both stopped, staring at each other, and then, irresistible as the pull of a magnet, Tony moved, drawn.

It might have been his imagination, but Barnes met him more than halfway, mouth already parted as if to say yes to a question Tony didn’t even know how to ask.

When Barnes’ lips touched his-- 

Utter perfection. 

It didn’t matter that Barnes’ lips were a little chapped, that his mouth was a little sour, that he smelled like he probably missed the last few showers.

It didn’t matter that Tony’s abdomen was on fire with pain, that his heart was broken, that he was raging against his father, his fate, his life… 

Barnes’ kiss drove all of that away and lit up every corner of Tony’s soul. Even if he’d always expressed doubt that such an entity existed, and if it did, surely it would be damned.

But Barnes took all that away. With something as simple as a kiss, Tony’s life was transformed.

There was only a bittersweet ache that Steve wasn’t--

“Steve!” Tony pushed Barnes away, and he had the distinct impression that Barnes was letting him do it. How could he have been so stupid? He knew Steve wasn’t his soulmate, knew that-- bad enough that he’d done things with Steve, things that were a betrayal of--

“Shhhh, doll,” Barnes said.

“But Steve is your soulmate!” Jesus, Tony had thought he was ready to die, but apparently his traitor heart hadn’t gotten the news, because it beat frantically with fear.

“Yeah,” Barnes said. Then, “So are you.”

“That’s not possible,” Tony said. “It’s a lie, it’s… look.” He waved at the photographs. “Yours doesn’t match mine. It matches his.”

“You’re not lookin’ at it right,” Barnes said.

“I don’t see--”

“No, you don’t. But I do,” Barnes said, very gently. “Here, look again.” And he pulled his shirt up to display his soulmark, red star… silver background. _ With a blue sheen _.

“What the hell?” 

Tony pushed closer, trying to-- “it’s the arc-reactor,” he said, his stomach lurching painfully, like his whole body had lifted and then been shot down. “Just bad lighting.”

“No,” Barnes said. “It’s _you_. It’s you, Tony, don’t you see? We’re a good match, you an’ me. And Steve an’ I are a good match. An’ you and Steve. But when we’re _all together… _you. You being with us makes _them all_ _match_. When your light shines on all of us. We’re meant to be together. That’s… that’s why you couldn’t find Steve. What happens to a needle held between two perfectly aligned magnets. It stays right there. Stuck, between two overwhelming forces. Like we all were. Stuck.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Because I came to find you,” Barnes said. “Drawn… I couldn’t stop myself, even if I wanted to, and I-- it’s you. It’s always been you.”

“It’s a _ lie _,” Tony said, sniffling. He wiped his nose on his arm, indelicate and petulant, like a child. “Howard did this to us--”

“He didn’t,” Barnes said. “And even if he _ did _, that doesn’t change it. Steve didn’t have a mark until he came out of the vitaray chamber. I didn’t have one until Zola held me prisoner, experimented on me. We’re all victims of the same monster. But that doesn’t make it a lie. Tony, we’re all meant to be together.”

Tony couldn’t breathe, like his chest was squeezing shut. His heart pounded in his chest, his legs burned--

“And here comes Steve,” Barnes said. “You can feel him, too. He’s run all this way, and I bet he doesn’t even know why.”

“He’s not going to like this,” Tony warned. “And you, you were practically catatonic-- how the--”

“Do you think I’m lying?”

Tony looked at him, really looked. Barnes was-- almost as if he were glowing. The warmth in those blue eyes, the softness in his mouth. He was perfect and beautiful and-- “No.”

“Then we’ll work it out. We got a good, solid base.”

“You are no architect,” Tony said. “This is about the _ worst _foundation I ever even heard of.”

“We’ll fix it, doll, don’t you worry none.”


	12. All the Things You Never Wanted

Steve was running; he was terrified and elated and shocked and confused all at the same time and he didn’t even know why.

Sweat beaded along his forehead, gathered in cold clenches under his arms, dripped from his throat down his chest.

He was getting _looks_, and he hated those, even when he knew it wasn’t unusual at all to stare at someone running flat out down the road. Even without the person being Steve Rogers, who could and was leaping over stopped cars and pushing speeds of almost forty miles an hour.

The first jolt to his chest had sent him screaming upright from sleep to frantically call medical to check on Bucky.

Who was reported as _missing_.

Steve didn’t even bother to call anyone else. He pulled on a pair of sweatpants and a tee, barely remembering shoes, before sprinting all the way from the small apartment he still kept -- even though he’d been living with Tony for months now -- to the Tower.

It hadn’t felt right, even at the time, keeping the apartment. He had a soulmate, he was living with his soulmate, but he’d needed it. For what, he didn’t know.

Until he saw Bucky again and he _did know_.

Bucky was his soulmate, just like he’d always thought and hoped and believed, and there was a part of him that went incandescent with joy.

There’d been another part of him that broke open and was raw and bleeding and was crying for Tony, but he ignored it. He ignored it because it didn’t make sense. He was broken, the way he’d always been broken. Never good enough, even after Rebirth, even being Captain America, because if he wasn’t broken, he wouldn’t need someone who wasn’t his soulmate, right?

But he had Bucky now, and Bucky never needed to know that Steve had doubted him, right?

Except being with Bucky, even sitting by his side, there was something _wrong_. Something missing. It didn’t feel the way Steve thought it should, and he didn’t know why. It made no sense. Bucky _was _his soulmate, even Tony had admitted it. 

And yet, Bucky looked at Steve with almost no recognition, with no fondness. No yearning.

Like he didn’t know Steve at all. 

But maybe that was something Hydra had done to him, erased his memory of his soulmate, broken him somehow.

They’d fix it, they would.

Whatever had happened to Bucky, Steve would make it right. If he had to burn down the whole world to fix it.

_Maybe burning down the world isn’t what Bucky needs._

That small, sullen voice sounded like Tony, and it didn’t seem to matter how fast Steve ran, he couldn’t outrun it.

Even as fast as he was going, something-- something kept drawing his mind back to Tony, to the utter desolation he’d seen on the man’s face. The spurt of guilt, knowing Steve had caused it. But what choice had he had? Bucky was his soulmate. Some… what he felt for Tony was a leftover proximity affection -- Steve had called it love from lack of a better word, but it had never seemed complete to him, never quite enough, and he blamed Tony for it, and Tony knew that he did.

_You’ve treated Tony horribly._

And that sounded like Bucky. Angry and disappointed and made Steve want to shrink on himself with shame. He had, he knew he had. Even when he thought Tony was his soulmate, Steve hadn’t been able to give himself over, not completely, not to Tony. Knowing that there was something wrong with their bond, Steve _had _held himself back.

_If he was your soulmate or not, he’s a person, Steve, and you treated him badly._

_I did it for you_, Steve argued with the voice in his head, and was met with only cold disapproval. 

Bucky would never -- never -- have wanted Steve to treat anyone unkindly. Not even a false soulmate.

Steve’s mark pulsed with agony and he had to slow down, reaching one hand toward it, and almost amazed when it didn’t come back bloody. He felt like it should be bloody, that something had happened, something really, really bad--

_What the hell is going on?_

There was no way to know until he got where he was going. Drawn by longing and need, pulled by pain. Something waited for him at the end of the line. The place where he and Bucky had always promised they’d go together.

_Until the end of the line._

It was Steve, and because that had been true his entire life, he didn’t stop to consider what might be behind the door, what crazy thing he might see. All he knew is that he needed to be there, and so he just grabbed the door and threw it open. Or threw it, he was never quite certain afterward if he’d ripped the damn thing right off the hinges.

Trying to reconstruct the events later -- there would be an entire stack of paperwork over the incident -- Steve said he didn’t know what he was seeing when he entered the room.

That was only about half a lie.

He thought, at first, that Bucky was killing Tony.

Probably because that was the thing that made the most sense. Bucky was out of his mind with pain, with decades of being someone else, with discovering -- possibly -- that Steve had been having an affair with someone who wasn’t his soulmate.

Except that believing that Tony was being murdered should not have caused his heart to stop, his breathing to stutter, the complete and utter desolation he felt on the thought that he might be _too late_.

Steve didn’t like to think of himself as a selfish person, but when he examined his motives, he rather discovered that he was. Sometimes all the doing the right thing and standing up for the little guy was motivated by Steve’s own desire to be someone. To be known for doing the right thing, no matter what the cost.

“No!” Steve screamed. He reached, grabbed the back of Bucky’s shirt and yanked him away. 

Tony was gasping, his hand over his heart, and--

He was _alive_, he was--

Steve took in the details, as best he was able to, his brain a tumultuous riot of emotions, panic, and desperation. Tony was pupil-blown, his mouth pink and lips swollen, his expression dazed. Not as if he was being throttled, but as if he had been being kissed, and that thoroughly. 

Sudden, aching jealousy shot through Steve like a bolt of lightning.

“Here comes Rogers,” Bucky said, dripping with sarcasm, “bringing the calm.”

Steve couldn’t even respond to Bucky’s words, or the confusion and chaos in his heart. All Steve could do was reach out and touch Tony’s face. “I thought you were hurt,” he whispered, and the knot of panic unraveled when Tony put his hand on Steve’s and leaned into his caress. 

“No, I’m--”

“Yes, he was,” Bucky said, standing up and brushing himself off. “He is.”

“Bucky, it’s fine,” Tony tried to say, although those glorious brown eyes kept stuttering back to Steve’s face, almost like he didn’t recognize Steve. Or if he was seeing him for the very first time, despite knowing him so well. Despite being--

“It’s not _fine_, Tony,” Bucky said, annoyed.

“I treated you so badly,” Steve said. He couldn’t say anything else. It didn’t matter that he was confused, that he had no idea what was going on, and that he was almost positive that Bucky and Tony had, in fact, been _kissing_. 

Everything else was so clear.

Tony-- it didn’t matter that it didn’t make sense. Tony was his soulmate. He was, and Steve had all but trampled it.

Right here, in this room, was exactly where he belonged. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Tony,” Steve said, and he didn’t know he was crying until Tony reached up a tentative finger and traced the line. “I was selfish and wrong and I love you, and I was so stupid--” He couldn't speak anymore, even though there were so many things he needed to say. How ashamed he was of himself, and he knew that would just get worse as his brain constantly reviewed what had happened and pointed out more and more incidents of casual cruelty.

“Well, it’s about damn time, Stevie,” Bucky said. 

“I don’t-- I don’t understand,” Steve admitted.

“You were,” Tony agreed. “Stupid. But that’s all right, because there’s a lot of fuckery going on all the way around. I don’t think it’s all your fault.” He gave Steve a glare. “But it was a lot your fault. And Dad’s. I’m almost glad Howard’s not around anymore, because I would probably ask you to punch him in the face. Gently, though. You pack a hell of a wallop.”

“Howard’s already paid, as much as he can,” Bucky said, solemn and quiet. 

“Pay for what?” Steve demanded.

“Making us what we are,” Tony said. “Aside from completely unethical scientific experimentations on children, including me, and you--”

“I wasn’t a child,” Steve said.

“But you did not know what you were doing,” Tony said. “And you didn’t know all the possible ramifications. And more importantly, neither did Howard. Show him.”

That was directed at Bucky. Who was just grinning now, the asshole. Steve huffed, and -- he didn’t feel any differently, now that he was paying attention to Bucky. He didn’t feel jealous, or possessive, or anything. Just love.

“Our soulmarks,” Bucky said. “They do match. Because Tony makes ours-- look.” He tugged up his sleeve to show his mark. “It matches. They all match. When we see them together.”

“Remember my dad’s butler, Jarvis?” Tony asked. “He told me once that his Ana’s mark was a mirror image; because hers was on her back, and she’d never seen it any other way, aside from in a mirror.”

“We match, when Tony’s light shines on us,” Bucky said. 

“Two soulmates? I have two soulmates?”

“Apparently so,” Tony said. “And so do I, and so does Bucky. Bucky’s trying to convince me it doesn’t matter that dear old Dad made it that way. When you don’t have fresh, store-bought is fine, I guess.”

“What?”

“I mean, like insulin. It doesn’t matter that someone’s got to inject it. If their body’s not producing it. The insulin works, just like the homemade stuff.” Tony said. “Best part of all three of us might have come out of a bottle, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s _still us_.”

“And we still have to deal with the soulmate bond, just the way it is,” Bucky said.

“And whatever damage I’ve done to it,” Steve said, and he couldn’t help reaching for Bucky’s hand, even as he touched Tony’s cheek.

“Nothing’s hurt that won’t heal,” Tony said, looking down at himself ruefully. “Bucky’s been damaged, I’ve been damaged, you’ve been damaged. Do you know what Kintsugi is?”

Steve shook his head, numb.

“It’s a Japanese art form of repairing a broken plate with gold,” Tony said. “The effect is really rather beautiful. It’s also a part of philosophy. That something that’s broken might also be beautiful, if you put the work in to repair it, rather than just throwing it away.”

“You’re saying we can be fixed?”

“He’s saying that we’re better together, punk,” Bucky said.

“Jerk,” Steve responded without thought.

“Really, it’s not like it matters,” Tony said. “Much as I hate to admit it, I love you anyway. Doesn’t matter if I wanted to, or if you loved me back, or if Howard expected it. None of that matters. I love you. And I love you.”

“I know,” Bucky said.

“Do not go all scruffy nerfherder on me.” Tony protested. “You are not as cool as Han Solo.”

“What?”

Bucky laughed. “How can you have been in this brave new world and not have seen _Star Wars_?”

“It’s a movie,” Steve said, like that meant something.

“Great. Date night,” Tony said. “We’re going to order pizza and watch the original trilogy and none of this Anakin Skywalker nonsense.”

It was all nonsense as far as Steve was concerned. But a date sounded good. He glanced at Tony, wondering if a date would lead to more than a date, and if that was the case, did he even know how it would work, to share-- well, that -- with more than one person.

“Sunshine,” Tony said, as if he could read Steve’s mind, “this won’t be my first rodeo. I’m just not up for a threesome sexcapade right now. I am just now recovered from time in a hospital bed, and not all of us are fancy super-soldiers, you know.”

“You’re already thinkin’ about an orgy, Steve?” Bucky demanded, his cheeks going pink.

“Oh, tell me you weren’t,” Steve said, elbowing Bucky in the ribs hard enough to all but knock him over.

“I hate to interject my vast and extensive sexual history into this argument, but _three _is not an orgy,” Tony said.

“Right,” Steve said, barely able to meet Tony’s eyes, and then, just as suddenly, not being able to look away. “We’ll depend on you to teach us to do it right.”

“Now that’s a plan, Captain.”


	13. Something to Have and to Hold

Tony didn’t usually like being in medical. He chafed at the restrictions, hated being hovered over or made a fuss of. Howard had never seen the need to coddle a child. Sick with a fever was slacking, and a broken arm was foolishness.

Which meant Tony worked through bouts of pneumonia and ignored things like human need for sleep or recuperating.

Most of the time.

If someone would have told him a decade ago that he would have lingered in his sick bed to avoid _sex_, he’d have laughed.

But maybe he did. Because he was still a little sure he was going to get his heart broken. Again. That Steve Rogers was going to rip it out of his chest and let Bucky stomp on it before the two of them lit it on fire.

He argued with himself that it wasn’t fair. Bucky had never intentionally hurt Tony at all -- aside from the whole dead parents thing. Tony had been mostly still high on pain killers when that particular piece of information came to light, and Bucky had been sullen and withdrawn for several days after. But they’d come to some sort of understanding about it.

Sometimes, Tony thought, that Howard had deserved it. Fucking around with things he didn’t understand, to be murdered by one of the very men he manipulated and helped to create.

The rest of the time, Tony grieved. For his mother, who had not deserved it. And for Bucky, who really had never wanted any of this. And for himself.

For the first week, no one seemed to mind, although Pepper had raised an eyebrow when Tony didn’t protest the doctor’s advice to rest and recover.

But even Rhodey stopped in after ten days, just to make sure things weren’t worse than had been reported.

“You’re hidin’,” Rhodey said. “I get it. It’s a lot.”

“I’m not hiding,” Tony protested. “I’m resting. It is a thing people do.”

“Since when are you _people_, Tones?”

“Since I ended up with two soulmates, and I’m not convinced that they both wouldn’t be better off without me and my fake-ass in the equation,” Tony burst out. He scrubbed at his face, trying to unsee everything he’d seen. 

Trying not to wish he was someone else. Poor little rich boy with an overabundance of soul mates. No one was ever going to pity him. Get angry with him for daring to complain, more like. 

“Hey--” Rhodey said. “I don’t want to come over all sappy or nothin’, but you’re a hell of a catch, Tony, and if they can’t see that--”

“Well, then we’re all fucked, right? Evolutionarily speaking, soulmates are the dumbest things,” Tony complained. 

“You say that like anything about the human body is Intelligent Design. More like punt and panic design. Soulmates are more than making pretty babies together--”

“Good, because I think all of us are missing the right equipment.”

“I think it’s completely separate from that. I think your soulmate is the person -- or people -- that you need the most. For whatever reason that is; if you let them, Rogers and Barnes could be the best things to ever happen for you. I mean, look at it this way; would either of them even be alive now, if not for you? You saved Rogers, Rogers saved Barnes. God only knows what the three of you can accomplish.”

“You should have been my soulmate,” Tony said. “You saved my life more times than I’m really comfortable with.”

“I think I’ll keep Carol, if it’s just the same to you,” Rhodey said. “Look, just talk to them. I’ll tell ya, true love nonsense aside, communication is still key. You’re stuck together whether you like it or not, so you may as well figure out how to like it. I mean, knowing you, you’ll make it all complicated, even though it ain’t.”

“There’s nothing simple about any of this.”

“No. There’s nothing _easy_ about it. But it’s simple. You love them. So tell them.”

Tony scowled even harder and Rhodey changed the subject, because Rhodey was the best. Good advice and knowing when to shut the fuck up. Two qualities that Tony looked for in a friend.

In the end, it was Bucky who brought the matter to a head.

Well, all right, so Tony wanted to blame him. He wanted to be mad at Steve for being a dick, he wanted to be mad at Bucky for trying to play peacemaker. He wanted to be mad at himself for the inevitable belief that his soulmates weren’t real because they came out of a bottle.

“When you don’t have fresh, store bought will do,” Tony kept telling himself, but he didn’t believe it, and that was perhaps the worst part about it.

He didn’t believe he was worthy, and because he didn’t, he could accept Steve’s anger, it was understandable. He could accept Bucky’s confusion, because that made sense.

The idea that Tony Stark -- useless, spoiled, rich-boy Tony Stark -- deserved Captain America and Bucky Barnes as his soulmates was fucking laughable. No one should believe that. And if the press ever found out that it came out of a goddamn bottle; well there was no telling what people would do with that information.

Some ass-clown would probably set up shop, trying to sell people merely in love some sort of miracle cure. Tony sighed and shook his head. Well, it wasn’t like people hadn’t tried it before. Snake oil salesmen and Cupid Experts were still a thing. Even if they called themselves Probiotic juicers and Tindr.

Less than an hour after he was released from medical and headed up to the penthouse, Bucky Barnes kicked his door in.

Literally.

“Klondike, woah, hey, what the actual _fuck_,” Tony spluttered, backing away from the twisted remains of what had been a high-quality safety door.

“You didn’t send for us,” Bucky said.

“Send-- you’re not a delivery pizza,” Tony protested.

“You’re home, you’re better,” Bucky pointed out, and he was crowding into Tony’s space like Tony was putting off his own personal gravity field. He cupped Tony’s cheek with one hand, gentle and sweet, completely at odds with the predator about to eat a mouse aura he was projecting. “Do you-- not want us?”

“It’s not that simple,” Tony protested. “There’s a lot to consider. Especially-- with how things are with me and Steve.”

“He feels real bad about it,” Bucky offered.

“Yeah, well, so do I,” Tony snapped. “It sucks. He was horrible and it doesn’t even matter if I deserved it or--”

“You really didn’t,” Steve said, picking his way carefully through the wreck that was Tony’s door. “I don’t know how to apologize by doing anything other than trying to start over, better.”

“What did you two do, plan this? I just came home from medical and I’m feeling very attacked here. It’s not fair, you know, conspiring.” Tony held on to his anger with every bit of stubbornness in him, because he was pretty sure he was going to lose.

But Tony knew business, and even in losing, he could get a lot of concessions. Especially if he didn’t admit defeat even one _second _before he had to.

“What, no, Carol just told me you were out of medical and I came up to see how you were feeling,” Steve said.

“I’ve been spying,” Bucky admitted without any shame. “Had an alert ping me on my phone as soon as you checked out. Headed out from my place as soon as I knew.”

“Your… what’s your place?”

“Miss Potts set him up with one of the guest apartments, down on the thirty-sixth floor,” Steve said. “He’s got it all homey and everything. Better than me. I haven’t even changed out the furniture that came with the place.”

“That is because you do not know how to treat yourself,” Bucky said, rolling his eyes. “This guy thinks just because we had crappy shoes in the forties, he’s gotta live with sandpaper sheets and not complain. It’s ridiculous.”

“I mean-- why aren’t you living _together_?” Because Tony had thought they were cohabitating. Having crazy supersoldier sex, waking up together to have breakfast. All the sorts of things that they’d probably always wanted to do. Without Tony involved. Even if they had to include him… eventually. 

Steve at least had the grace to look ashamed of himself.

“We--”

“Buck,” Steve said, quietly, “this one’s on me. It is. I-- I told Tony I wished it was you.”

“Well, it was me, you idiot,” Bucky said. “And this fuckin’ soulmate thing is all borked to hell and back because of how it went. Which-- like none of us coulda known, but now we gotta fuckin’ fix it. We were waiting for you. Ain’t gonna strain and stretch this any more’n it already is. We’re together. All of us. So we gotta figure it out _together_.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means if you want to live all three seperate for a while, go out on dates, figure it out like we just met, we can do that. If we want to just-- jump in, we can do that, too.”

“And I get to decide this why?”

“You don’t,” Bucky said. “We’re all decidin’ _together_. That’s the whole point. Christ, the two of you got heads harder than bricks.”

“We’re a good match,” Steve said, finally looking up at Tony, and-- well, Tony might not have trusted what he saw, but it was hard to deny the shining gratitude and love in Steve’s face. God, it was annoying. Tony wanted to be mad, he wanted to be hurt, he deserved to be completely on the outs with his soulmates. Steve had been hurtful and horrible, and Bucky was-- well, he was Bucky and there was a whole storage shed’s worth of baggage to unpack there.

Being soulmates didn’t make any of that shit easier, either. He might have thought it would, that he could just push all of it behind him, it was over and done.

He couldn’t.

He couldn’t, would not, forget.

But he could forgive. And maybe, in time, he wouldn’t think about what had happened. It would be a ridiculous story to tell when people asked how they met.

“All right,” Tony said. “Dating. My heart isn’t a doormat to get stomped all over. We’ll figure it out. But it’s going to take time.”

Steve nodded, eyes big and wide and sad, which was completely not fair, since now Tony had guilt and this was not his fucking fault!

“We got plenty of time, kitten,” Bucky told him. “Nothing but time.” 

* * *

It was all Bucky could do to keep from dancing his victory dance and pumping his fist in the air. _Weeks._

Tony had taken weeks to relax enough to do more than go to the movies, or out to dinner with them. One time Tony had sat in Bucky’s lap and they’d necked like teenagers while Steve was at some charity function. But that was it.

And while Steve had indicated on several occasions that he’d be delighted to go to bed with Bucky, with or without Tony’s presence, Bucky-- well, it just wouldn’t feel right. Which meant Bucky’s 75 year dry spell continued to drag out.

(Tony had also indicated that he’d be happy to take necking on the sofa to fucking on the floor and Buck wondered how he’d become the neutral party in this, all things considered.)

“We don’t have to have a threesome, first thing,” Steve had tentatively mentioned, right at the beginning of their most recent date. “If we’re not-- not ready for that. I just…”

But Bucky had kicked him in the leg and Steve had shut up. If they went that route, Bucky had no doubt that Steve and Tony would put off dealing with their issues in exchange for focusing on Bucky. Peacemaker. That was a strange job for the Winter Soldier to hold.

He loved his soulmates, with everything left in him that he had to give, and he would be damned -- again -- if he let this relationship splinter and crack under the weight of past mistakes. 

_Work your shit out, guys._

Dating.

They went dancing, they went to movies. Dinner. Rides in the park. They had a picnic lunch. It was silly and it was sweet. And Bucky was in turn patient and chomping at the bit. 

So when Tony finally invited them up to the penthouse for post-date drinks -- “by which I mean I will drink scotch and you two can have kool-aid or something, because I’m not wasting good booze on someone unaffected by it” -- Bucky was almost shocked. He’d thought it was going to take longer.

“You’re sure,” Bucky said.

“Look, Buckybear, sometimes you have to fly before you can run,” Tony said. “I’m not good at waiting for things I want, and I’m really, really bad about anticipation. It kills me, really. I have a heart condition. You two will live forever, probably. I’m just a mortal man. If I’m going to get my piece of this, and you two, I should do it soon. Because I’ll tell you the other thing; the longer we put this off, the more self conscious I get about how goddamn gorgeous you both are. I mean, we know with Steve, it came out of a bottle, but you’ve always been fucking beautiful. I mean that, I’ve seen the pictures.”

“Tony,” Steve said, earnestly, giving Tony that puppy-dog look. Steve had all the enthusiasm, and sometimes the brains, of a Golden Retriever. “You are-- you’re so much better than anything I could have ever expected to have. I’m sorry it took me so long to realize it. But you’re a gift.”

“Yeah,” Tony said, pouring himself a drink and staring at the wall. “You gonna unwrap me, big guy?”

“If you insist,” Steve said. He took the glass out of Tony’s hand and put it down. “Are you attached to this shirt?” He plucked at the material curiously.

“You are not planning on ripping it off me,” Tony protested, but there was a gleam in his eye. A tugging of interest along the soulmate bond that sent a shiver along Bucky’s spine.

“I think he is, so if you like that shirt, better say so now,” Bucky said.

“No, I think I want to witness this,” Tony said, and he spread his arms a little away from his body in what was unmistakably a dare.

“Don’t say he didn’t warn you,” Bucky said. Steve grabbed Tony’s shirt with one hand and yanked. Tony’s shirt practically exploded, hanging in tatters off one shoulder. The arc-reactor gleamed, beautiful and blue and exposed, and Tony’s knees buckled. Steve caught him before he fell. 

“Okay, that might have been the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen,” Tony said, breathless. “Why didn’t-- no, nevermind. Bed. Now.”

* * *

There were, in fact, a couple of different ways to have group sex. The first way, the more common way, was everyone was in it for their own pleasure, and you didn’t really have to worry about motives. It was just sex. Make sure everyone was lubed up and watch the cross-contamination with condoms, and you were fine.

The other way was more complicated and involved _feelings_.

Which might have been the problem. Or a problem. Was Tony going to feel left out if Steve dedicated attention to Bucky? Was Bucky going to feel oddly that Steve and Tony already knew each other’s bodies?

It wouldn’t be the first time -- and probably not the last time, either -- where jealousy and uncertainty was going to make their relationship tricky.

Or at least, those were Tony’s thoughts before Bucky scooped him up and the three of them fell into Tony’s big bed.

Tony kicked his shoes off and then found himself being kissed frantically by Bucky. Bucky had an entirely different way of kissing than Steve, and Tony was comparing them without even meaning to. Steve was strong, forceful, his tongue demanding. Steve invaded. 

Bucky invited. His mouth was soft, sweet, and his tongue flicked across Tony’s lip as if he wasn’t sure he was allowed. Tony’s hand slipped into that silky hair, thick and just a little oily, and held on. Somewhere in there, he was aware that Steve was stripping them both, and then himself, and by the time they were all naked on Tony’s bed, Tony was breathless.

Every time he tried to say something -- and Tony knew himself for an avid talker, both in bed and elsewhere -- Bucky kissed him, until Tony didn’t have anything to say.

And then he had a lot to say, because Steve tugged Tony’s body one way, and then his mouth came down on Tony’s cock.

“Holy shit,” Tony gasped, looking down. Steve’s blonde head moved, hungrily, between Tony’s splayed thighs, and one of Steve’s hands was wrapped around Bucky’s cock, jerking it almost ruthlessly. Bucky moaned into Tony’s mouth, recaptured his lips. Tony wasn’t entirely sure that was fair, he had more observations to make, but the way Bucky was kissing him, the way Steve was--

“Hey, hey, hey,” Tony said, pushing Bucky off so he could talk. “You know I am a, older, and b, not a super soldier. If the idea is to wear me out so you two can spend the rest of the night defiling my bed--”

“You’ll enjoy every minute of it,” Bucky said. “Gimme some room here, Stevie.” Steve didn’t bother to say anything, he just hummed his agreement, which sent sparkles of pleasure up Tony’s cock and right into the base of his spine.

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t,” Tony protested, even as he leaned his head back. Bucky was licking at his throat, and then down his chest to nibble at his collarbone. “I just want to know the plan.”

“We have a plan? Yes, yes, we have a plan,” Bucky said, then nuzzled at Tony’s nipple, making it pebble and ache in the best ways, the scruff of his stubble prickling against the tender skin. “It’s a good plan, too.”

Tony laughed, snorted, and then got to coughing because of it. “Steve, make him stop making Disney princess jokes while I’m trying to get laid.”

Steve pulled off with a lewd slucking noise, glanced up at Tony. His lip and chin were shiny with spit. “No, I don’t think I will.” He licked his lower lip, as if capturing the taste of Tony, and then went back to it, leaving Tony open mouthed and blustering, which turned into a soft moan. Steve was pretty damn good at blowjobs.

A moment later, turned out Bucky was, too. He slithered down Tony’s body, that metal hand grabbing Tony’s wrist and holding him. Steve mimicked it on the other side, and Tony lay, unable to move, a super soldier on each side, as they ate him up like an ice cream. Thighs spread, lasciviously, and trapped under them.

It was the best kind of vulnerability, helplessness. 

Tony knew himself pretty well, as blind as people sometimes thought he was, and he knew that, given choices, he preferred to please his partners, that pleasure was something he gave, like a gift, to whoever would ask it of him. He didn’t always know how to accept it, he would divert, block, distract.

But now, now there was nothing he could do but lay there, subject to someone else’s attention. Two someone else’s, point of fact.

Tony managed to struggle enough to lean up on his elbows so he could watch them. The sensation of two tongues, two sets of fingers, was almost more than he could bear, and then combined with the lewd images. Bucky and Steve, kissing each other over and around Tony’s dick, returning to lick at the sides. Bucky would lave at the base while Steve suckled the crown in, tongue tracing around the rim.

Not much time passed before Tony was writhing on the bed, not even bothering to look, trapped, pinned down, held captive by pleasure, begging and pleading, and if someone had asked if he was begging them to stop, or to let him come, he wouldn’t have known the answer. They seemed to have some sort of weird telepathy going on, continuing to drag it out long after Tony would have had his orgasm. Held on the trembling edge, then eased down, then up again, until Tony was wrung out, whimpering and hissing and practically screaming.

He thought, he might have thought, if he had room in his head for thinking, that it couldn’t get better, but then he dimly recognized the sound of a bottle opening, and wet fingers traced over his hole.

“You think we can both fit?” Bucky wondered, then licked a path right up Tony’s cock, from base to crown, and blew cool air over the wet flesh, making Tony shiver uncontrollably.

“Uh, while, oh, fuck,” Tony said, his hips rocking up into it, hole clenching as Steve breached him with one finger. “Normally, yes, but-- Christ, I need it, I don’t… oh, my god, don’t make me wait--”

Because if he had to wait, held down and unable to get his hands on his lover while they opened him up enough to take both of them, he might very well die. What a way to go, but still, death. It wasn’t the goal.

“Why don’t you take him,” Steve suggested, pulling his finger out. Tony whined at the empty feeling, then hissed as Steve came back with two, and more lube. It burned for a moment, then Steve found his prostate and worked it. Tony all but forgot the question, fucking back onto Steve’s fingers. “And then I’ll take _you_.”

Tony’s mind went white. Steve, driving the train, plowing into Bucky, who would then fuck Tony?

“_Jesus_,” Tony managed, then he struggled to sit as Steve let him go. “Come on, okay, before-- I need to get my mouth on you.” 

Steve gave Tony a quick kiss. “Gonna go wash my hands, you keep him busy for a moment.”

“Roger that, Rogers,” Tony said, pushing Bucky over onto the bed. He knew Bucky let him, went willingly where Tony directed, but it was still obscene and delicious. And Bucky’s cock, thick and dark, was even moreso, hot against Tony’s lips, then filling up his mouth.

This Tony was particularly good at, all false modesty aside, and he curled his fingers around Bucky’s hips, encouraging him to thrust until Bucky was fucking Tony’s throat. 

“Yeah, I could watch that all day,” Steve murmured, coming back from the bathroom. 

“You want to join this party from the rear,” Tony suggested, wiggling said rear.

“No, no, uh-uh, nope,” Bucky said, knocking Tony onto his back. He nestled himself in the cradle of Tony’s thighs, and growled in Tony’s ear. “That’s my ass today. Steve’s had his turn, I want to feel how hot and tight ya are.”

Tony went all melty with need. “Yeah, okay, then _get in here_.”

Bucky took him at his word, nudging at Tony’s opening, and then taking him in one, searing thrust, all the way down.

Tony arched up into it, body fighting with the intrusion until Bucky stroked Tony’s cock a few times, and Tony’s body went _oh, right, this_.

“You are ridiculously well-endowed, did anyone ever tell you that?” Tony mock-complained between breaths. Bucky only smirked, and rocked him. Almost gently, after that first stroke, easy and slow until Tony’s body was moving with him.

“Well, you look blissed out,” Steve commented, and the rhythm changed again. Steve was opening Bucky up, Tony guessed, even though he couldn’t see it. But he could watch the expressions on Bucky’s face as his mouth twisted with pleasure, his eyes rolled back, the way his teeth dented that plush lower lip.

“Oh, shut up,” Tony said, nudging Steve with his foot, “and do your part of the job.”

Steve grabbed Tony’s ankles and spread his legs even further, pushing his thighs back until he was practically folding Tony in half like a deck chair, Bucky pinned between them. “Yeah, you think I’m not working, here?”

Bucky grunted, then shoved, pushing into Tony so hard as to knock the breath out of him. 

“Jesus, Stevie,” Bucky complained. “I thought you had a dick back there, not a fireplug.”

“You two are the worst,” Steve said. “Complaints, whining, what’s a fella to do.”

“Fuck me,” Bucky said, “and do it right.”

Before Tony even had a moment to catch his breath, or to make another one of his famed sarcastic comments, Steve was working them like a train engine. And like a train engine, it took a while to get going, each wheel and gear turning slow, slow, so impossibly slow that you would think, looking at it, that it would never get going.

And then, just like a plane, speeding up until it left the ground. And Tony’s metaphors sucked. Didn’t matter. It was glorious and he was flying. His hands clenched against Bucky’s hips, holding Bucky to him, touching that heated skin and marveling that, at least for this moment, they were his, they were both his, and he was theirs, and maybe, maybe just this once, it was something that Tony could keep.

Bucky’s hips rolled against Tony’s, a perfect grind, moving in him. After a while, Bucky found that sweet spot, or Steve was directing him to it, and all Tony could do was hold on. “I don’t know if I can do this,” Tony murmured, not sure if he wanted it to stop, only knowing that all his muscles were limp and weak, he was drenched in sweat, and he felt like he’d been running a marathon in all the best ways. There had to be some best ways, right? Because Tony sure felt like the best, at the moment.

“You got this, doll,” Bucky said to him, and for just a moment, it was Tony and Bucky together, just like they were supposed to be, and if Tony ever had any insight at all, it was this; Bucky was always meant to be his. Always. It wasn’t something Howard had done.

They were right and perfect together, and Tony was going to come, untouched, screaming, in about thirty-seven seconds.

Which was right about the time that Steve reached around and took hold of Tony’s cock, stroking roughly. Tony moaned and arched into it, changing the entire angle of their penetration. Bucky shrieked, slamming into Tony hard, fast, eager.

Tony’s world was shaking apart. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even gasp or moan. His fingers clenched against Bucky’s thighs, probably leaving bruises that would fade in moments.

Steve was chanting something and it took even Tony’s genius brain a few seconds to focus on it, but he was calling their names, in between gasps and pledges of devotion, between declarations of love.

Steve loved him.

It might even have been true.

Tony might even believe it.

When Tony came, it wasn’t just an orgasm. It was a tactical nuke, and it blew his world to pieces. He screamed, writhed, thrashed. His hands clenched at Bucky’s legs. He thought he might actually have seen the face of God.

He wasn’t sure if he went blind for a short period of time, or that he was so utterly sated and weary that he didn’t realize his eyes were closed. 

Somewhere, when Steve was lifting him up to help him clean his sticky thighs, Tony came back to himself.

“You are the most beautiful thing I ever saw,” Steve told him, which Tony might have disbelieved, because Steve had gone out of his way to not value Tony, and those were wounds that might take _years _to heal. But Steve ducked his head in that way of his, and his cheeks were pleasantly pink and he couldn’t quite meet Tony’s gaze.

“Thank you,” Tony said, because there wasn’t really anything else to say. “I love you.”

“You’re loved over here, too,” Bucky said, and while it wasn’t clear if he was directing that toward Tony or Steve, it was also clear that it didn’t matter.

They all loved…

Tony was loved.

Steve was brought in from the cold.

Bucky was returned to his mostly normal, brilliant asshole personality.

And Tony was loved.

Maybe, just maybe. Things could be fixed.

This was something Tony could have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, that's a wrap for this story, hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> Thanks again to ssyn3 for the inspiration and the constant support and encouragement :D


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